The Shape of No Hope
by KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: AU diverging from the Diana-focused two-parter. Diana returns home, only to find that her aunt has promised her to something vast and powerful. Who can save her in her darkest hour? Who will survive... and what will be left of them? Rated M for pervasive themes of horror and despair. Tread carefully.
1. The Sword Logic

_Author's Notes_ : Holy man God wow is this full of references to self-harm, nihilism, despair, and body horror. Tread carefully. The yuri is a long way away. Additionally: this was written as part of the Diakko (Dianakko?) Week Challenge on Tumblr, though it rapidly grew out of control into a full-bore fic.

* * *

"We learn to live with this poison in our veins." - Parables of the Allspring

* * *

Daryl's familiar slithered under her dress. "Well, well. I was wondering who it could be at this hour. Is that you, Diana?" The powerful witch loomed into sight, casting her gaze onto her niece, who stood in the awning alone. "When I heard footsteps, I was afraid it might be a burglar."

"Sorry for startling you, Aunt Daryl. It's been a while." Diana cut quite the dapper profile in her long brown cloak. It had only been a few months, but somehow the little lady had grown to look even more like Bernadette.

Daryl's heart twitched. There was no going back now. She's here for the greater good, she thought, just like you. It'll all work out. You'll all be stronger for this. She'll forgive you.

"Aunt Daryl...?" Diana said.

"Ah... sorry. For a moment there..." She sighed. "My eyes aren't as good as they used to be. For a moment I'd thought my sister had just stepped in out of the gloom."

"It's just me," Diana said. "I'm here for family business. I hope you understand that I'll be here for an extended stay."

"I understand." Daryl descended the staircase. "What brings you here from the nice warm halls of Luna Nova?"

"They haven't been warm all the time," Diana said. "Did you not hear about the ludicrous fairy protests a few months back?"

"Ah, no," Daryl said. She reached the bottom floor, and glided across the tiles to Diana. Diana flinched as her aunt approached. "Do tell. It sounds amazing."

"I..." Diana narrowed her eyes. "Why are you...?"

"Diana, Diana, Diana." Daryl reached for her face. "Can't I get a closer look at you after so long?"

"It's just... it's not like you."

"Diana. These are dark days. I didn't even see you at Christmas, much less New Years. I miss you, child." Her hand hovered near Diana's cheek. "May I? Please?"

"If you insist," Diana whispered.

"I do." She touched Diana's cheek. Her hand was perpetually chill and clammy in the winter; her blood ran cold as her familiars' blood did. Diana was practically aflame to her touch. "Coils of Yig, Diana. You look just like her."

Diana's expression did not soften.

Both hands now, gently tilting Diana's head upward. "You're beautiful, child. Your mother would be so proud of you..."

Diana pursed her lip. She did not feel the presence of the worm until it sank its teeth into the back of her knee. "Hgk-" Her aunt seized her left hand, pointing it away from her leg. "You-Daryl, what have you-"

The strength left her leg; she crumpled to her knee, feeling now the presence of something soft, fat, and chitinous clenching her leg, long spines digging into her thigh as her leg fell into it. It yielded, but its armor stayed firm. She felt something cold flow up her leg and into her sides, spreading like an uncontrollable cramp. She fell to her side, Daryl holding her arm up.

"Diana," Daryl said, and she was almost crying. "This is going to hurt. But he promised me that you're going to be safe in his tutelage."

"What are you doing, auntie?" Diana gasped, finding it hard to open her eye. "What are you..."

"I made a promise. We'll all be stronger for this, Diana." Daryl let her go, stepping back and watching her collapse onto her side.

Diana clawed towards her. "Daryl... you traitor... you..."

The fat worm-thing slithered away. The candles and torches flickered and died, casting the room into darkness.

Something darker than the absence of light loomed over Diana's head. She struggled to breathe, forced every jot of energy she had into hefting her left hand, trying to level the prongs of her wand at the presence overhead. A lash of underblack buried in her chest, spreading like roots under her skin, through her muscles, and it pulled her inside-

Daryl snapped her fingers.

A single candle flickered to life. She was alone; the worm had slithered away, wherever it may. Her familiar crawled up her neck, coiling around her shoulders, a comforting presence.

She blew out the candle and faded into the dark. She had debriefed the oarsman: he had simply piloted out into the evening to enjoy the night air. Anna would not be long for sleep and she would not ask questions, being prone to her own late-night trawls through the grounds of the castle.

"Good luck, Diana," Daryl said. "I hope he'll be kind to you."

* * *

You are Diana Cavendish. Star pupil of Luna Nova Academy. Born to power, stripped of power, earned your power back. You stared disbelievers in the eye and made them blink.

You have been taken.

Lower your wand. There's nothing more to be done here. You can surrender the burden at last.

What aspiration led you to this place? What dream was supposed to be yours?

You've hardened your heart and rebuilt your soul, but both of them were eaten away years ago. Your life has been the process of losing everything worth living for. With no foundation, every mote of power you build is swallowed whole by the hunger of your hollow life. No matter how powerful you become, the emptiness will be stronger, and one day it will snuff you out.

Every dream you hold dear has turned on you. Every wish answered has made your life harder to live. You have never known the pleasure of love, only the pain of its loss. The emptiness's icy breath creeps up your calves as it digs its teeth into your tendons.

You need to cut its throat while you have it exposed and waiting.

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [no hope]. Pick it up.

You will carve away the parts of you that hurt. The emptiness is an alpha predator, unstoppable, incontestable; you have the chance now to learn from it, steal from it, become it. You will strangle your dream in its crib. You will bleed love until your veins run dry. Stripped of meaning, pared of hope, you will be free in your newfound slavery.

Take up the knife. Become emptiness. Take your new shape.

* * *

Daryl was not a light sleeper, far from it. So when she woke to darkness, she knew at once the sensation of presence in the room was something to react to accordingly. She was up, wand in hand, her serpents coiling around the posts of her bed and the frame of her door. In silence she aimed her wand at the presence.

"Lights," she whispered.

Candles alit around her room in a spreading wave. At the furthest corner where she aimed was...

Her wand trembled. "Is that what he's done to you, Diana?"

Diana's hair hung limp over her face. Her clothes were stained with something that spread across her skin as well, tarry and starry and raw, like fresh-cut meat. Her familiars hissed and recoiled, fleeing from her presence into the safety of the darkness and through their many little hiding places.

Diana stepped forward. Her motions were smooth, practiced, and then they weren't, one step overlong, her head whipping in one direction, her right arm jerking, her right hand clenching. Her left hand bore her wand, the polished metal slick with a brackish filth that dripped from within her sleeve.

"Diana... did he hurt you?"

"Yes." Her voice was hoarse, thick, as if she had an awful cold. "I deserved it. As you deserve it."

Green energy flickered between the tines of Daryl's wand. "Diana, whatever happened, it was for the best. For all of us. He said he was going to return power to the Cavendish family name. He said we would be the first among witches, among all the witches of Earth."

"He didn't lie," Diana said, and she opened her cloak.

Daryl dropped her wand; it rolled down her thigh and into the folds of her covers.

" _My babies_ ," she stammered.

"They deserved their pain. In their weakness, they deserved death. Now they are nothing, as you soon will be nothing."

The strength left her and she let it fall way. Diana crawled onto her bed, climbed onto her, until they were face to face. Daryl stared at her through eyes blurred with tears. Diana glared not with her eyes, which were unfocused and dead, but with the light starting to burn between her eyebrows, the skin smoldering and flaking away in flecks of ash.

In silence, Diana unhinged her jaw and started with Daryl's eyes.

When she had eaten her fill, she knelt over her aunt's remains, contemplating their stillness, their incompleteness. As she did, her first grand mal seizure erupted across her body.

Every muscle flexed with supernatural force, yanking her arms, her legs, her head here and there; her back twisted far enough to crack the joint, tear the tendon. She held the impossible pose for a long moment as they knit together in their broken form; she wrenched herself back into something like a normal posture, re-breaking everything. At some point, she had bitten off the edge of her tongue.

Every spasm, every twist, every crack, was pure agony without even a taste of endorphins to dull the pain, no retreat into unconsciousness to stem the flow of pain. She wanted it to hurt. She choked on the vile ichor that had replaced her blood and she loved it.

The grand mal seizure faded; simple myclonic seizures took their place.

The change was progressing. She was hungry again.

* * *

Early the next afternoon, on a day so clear the sky seemed to stretch out forever, Akko knocked on the solid, stately front doors of the Cavendish mansion. "Hello!" she said. "Diana? Or people related to Diana? Anyone in there?"

"For the love of..." grumbled Paul Hanbridge. "This can't be happening."

"By reputation," Andrew said, "this isn't terribly like the Cavendishes."

"Well, I dunno, Diana was really upset. Maybe they ran off and left the castle unguarded and un-maid-ed and now she's gotta go and do all the maid stuff before she can answer the door."

"'Maid stuff,'" Paul said.

"Well, what else would a maid be doing on the job?" Andrew said.

Paul didn't dignify that with a response. "What do you say? One more minute before we contact them by phone?"

Before Andrew could do more than start to speak, the door opened. An older woman in dowdy sleepwear forced her way through the narrowest slit she could open the door and closed it behind her, slowly and silently.

"Did you come by car?" the woman whispered. "We have to run. Please, hurry."

"Pardon...?" Paul said.

"Wait, what's happening?" Akko said.

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain," the maid said, storming off between the lot of them, hiking up her skirt and running for the limousine.

"That's not helpful!" Akko said.

She was already banging on the side door, trying to pull the door open. "Christ, would you look at her-" Paul said.

"Given how terrified she is, don't you think we should heed that advice?" Andrew said. "Unless this is some sort of elaborate prank-"

"Hey!" Akko said. "Why should we be running?!"

Paul walked down the path to the driveway. "Perhaps the lady of the house has finally lost her last wit and is intent on sacrificing everyone in arm's reach to Satan."

"Don't even joke about that!" Akko said, taking Andrew by the hand and yanking him behind her.

"Woah, now!" he said.

"M'am," Paul Hanbridge said, putting his arm on the woman's shoulder and eliciting a shriek. "Please. Tell us what's happening. We can't help if you aren't upfront."

"There's been..." The maid fumbled for words. "There's been a curse of some kind. Young Mistress Diana... something has seized her. She's not human anymore. She's some flesh-eating thing spewing black magic. Everyone else in there is dead and we will be too if we don't run."

"...Come again?" Akko said, her voice small and tremulous.

"I said I didn't have time, goddamn you all," the maid said. "Now are we leaving or are you leaving us all to die?"

"If you insist," Hanbridge said, adjusting his glasses.

"Father, would it be..."

"Son, if you take a witch's side again I will strongly consider disowning you. Now let's leave and save what time we can."

"I..." Akko let go of Andrew's wrist. "I dunno."

The doors unlocked and the maid climbed into the limousine's front seat. "What was that?" Andrew said.

"If she's in trouble, I should help. There's a sorcerer's stone and I have the Shiny Rod!" She hefted the magic item above her head. "I can take it."

"If you insist," Andrew said. "But, here." He fetched a small phone from his pocket and pressed it into Akko's palm. "If anything goes wrong, even a little bit, call and I'll do my best to get you help."

"Thank you, Andrew," Akko said, giving him a hug. "I really appreciate it, okay? And, uh, don't drive off too far, alright?"

"I'll try," he said. He entered the car and conversed with his father; he closed the door behind him before she could catch more than a few stern words from his father. Not very encouraging words, they were. The limousine rumbled down the driveway and into the distance.

Akko bore the Shiny Rod in hand and headed for the front door.

* * *

Akko whistled. "Diana?"

The sounds echoed through the grand foyer. "Di-a-na?" she said. "It's me, Akko! I couldn't just let you run off, you know!" She wondered what the point was in framing a scorched canvas-especially one that was nearly seven feet tall-but she presumed it was some kind of highfaultin modern art deal.

She tapped the Shiny Rod on the ground as she walked. "Still here, like I was a minute ago... looking around for a kitchen, if I'm gonna be honest..."

She snooped around for a map, or a brochure, or even a sign reading YOU ARE HERE. Which really would be attached to a map, wouldn't it...? She wished she'd brought snacks, or more snacks. Or some of those little hand-warming packets. They did not pay for heating around here.

By the good grace of whatever god looks out for witches, she found the kitchen, or maybe just a kitchen, and at least the pantry. She found a jar full of peanut butter cookies, reasonably fresh, and had a few, before moving on to raid the fridge for something to, say, make a sandwich of. She assembled herself a turkey sandwich with plenty of life-giving mayo and bacon (cold but still good, if less crunchy than ideal-she didn't see a microwave around here). She wished there were chips anywhere in sight.

She carried a bottle of fancy apple cider with her as she searched for Diana. "Hey, Diana! I'm really still in the mansion! Just had a snack 'cause I was really hungry..." She looked up the staircase. No, no shadowy Diana lurking at the top. "Goin' upstairs. If you're not upstairs, yell where you are and I'll follow. Or just yell 'Marco!' Or should I be yelling 'Marco?'"

After some fumbling around, she caught a whiff of something truly rank. "Oh, dear God," she said, pinching her nose shut. Her belly quivered in fear. Don't you start now, Akko thought. She peered down the hall and saw a door partway open. If she had to guess, the smell had to be coming from there, seeing how there wasn't anything big and dead in the hallway. She gulped down a breath, held it, and stepped into the room.

It was a bedroom, spacious, real heavy on the snake theme. A headless corpse lay sprawled halfway out of bed, the body ravaged by teeth and claws, the open wounds swarmed by an abundance of fat black flies. Her bedding was a swamp of dried blood.

Akko closed the door, stumbled to the railing overlooking the grand foyer, and hurled her lunch onto the tiled floor below.

With much hesitation she swished the cider around in her mouth and spat it out. Then she fumbled for the phone. Juggling one too many objects in hand she wound up dropping it, dropping the cider (again, to the bottom floor,) batting the cell phone into the air to buy herself precious moments, and at last seized it in her left hand, perched on the railing with one leg and balancing with the other.

"Ha!" she said. She tilted just a little bit to the left and landed on her ass. She flipped through the phone, saw there were only two pre-registered numbers, and called Andrew.

* * *

"Hello?" Andrew said. He could feel his father roll his eyes.

"Andrew?"

"It's me. What's wrong, Akko?"

"I just found the deadest body I've ever seen and I think Crazy Maid Lady was right. I mean I haven't seen Diana but if that wasn't a dead body it's gotta be made from a dead body. Get some people over here right now, cops or the army or-can you call Luna Nova? You have their number, right?"

"I... surely father would have."

"Don't involve me in this," Paul said.

"Atsuko found a murder victim at the house," Andrew said, covering the phone's mic. "If we're silent we're as complicit in this as-"

Paul took the phone from Andrew's hands and spoke into it. "Young miss, if there is a crime, leave it to your people. I trust you have your own police." He pressed the end-call button, popped the casing off, separated phone and battery, and slipped the components into separate pockets. "Son, we've lowered ourselves enough by taxiing that lost creature away from her owners. Let the Caligulas enjoy their own company."

"Father, there's been-"

"I'll have you silent or I'll have you walk home. Don't test my last nerve, boy."

Andrew clamped his mouth shut and fumed in the stagnant silence, broken only by the nervous nightmare-twitches of the maid.

"I actually don't know if we have magic police," Akko said. "I mean, I think we should, but I haven't had to call them yet." She waited for a response. "Hello? You're there, right?" She checked the phone and saw she'd been hung up on. "Oh, come on! You friggin' jerk!" She tossed the phone down the hall and realized too late that was the worst thing she could've done. She scrambled after it on all fours. "Please don't be dead please don't be dead please don't be-"

The phone's screen alit under her palm, the speakers emitting a low, atonal series of beeps.

She hadn't realized that the lights had gone dark further up the hall, away from the windows. All but one, a pale white-blue.

Akko peered into the darkness.

The light wasn't so much a light as it was... maybe it was a picture, sitting in the middle of the hall? It had a quality like light, but like a painting of light, or like light in an old cartoon; it changed the value of the darkness around it, but it cast no shadows, no light on the walls and floor. It felt like it should be a blue-tinged white... but it was neither of those things. Those were the names her head conjured for what it was. Trying to fix a more accurate name to them felt like letting a worm wriggle in her brain.

The un-light was moving.

It was brightest-or the most different color-at its extremities. Moving legs, hidden by a darker coat, fading to a mantle of black deeper than the dark it emerged from. Akko had no idea how she missed the other un-light-the circle of white hovering in the midst of the darkness.

"Hello...?" Akko said, standing up. She felt the absence of the Shiny Rod, several steps behind her. But her wand was at hand. Why was she wanting her wand...?

"Atsuko Kagari..." the thing in the dark said.

"...D... Diana...?"

In the thin light, she saw Diana. It was Diana... it _was_ Diana. Her long coat was starlight around her shoulders; her legs, her arms, un-shone with light-like quality. From the waist up, the elbows up, her clothes, her hair, her body was oily black. Moldering and flickering in the center of her head, between where her eyes and nose should be, shone something so bright Akko couldn't believe she was staring straight into it.

"What happened to you?" Akko said.

"I am _Taken_."

"...what?" Akko stumbled backwards.

Diana's wand flicked into her hand. "Don't move."

Akko froze in place, not from magic but from fear. "Diana, did you... did you do that?" The smell of the dead body was rich in her nostrils.

"I did. Maril Cavendish, the eldest of my twin cousins. When she awoke, it was to my teeth cracking her spine. She was awake and present for her death."

Akko fumbled, as though her knees were hinged the wrong way. She grabbed for the railing to steady herself. "No... you couldn't..."

With rehearsed steadiness, Diana parted her cloak, revealing three mementos.

Akko tasted bile on her tongue. Her head was light; she struggled to retain her consciousness.

"I have, as I must." She let her cape drop and held out her hand. "Atsuko, you are of interest to the Taken King. This world's time is at an end. Will you join me?"

The word "no" died in Akko's throat. "Why?" broke free instead.

"The Sword Logic." Diana's stillness was disrupted by violent tremors. She shrugged her head into her left shoulder, her elbow bending the wrong way until it broke. Her hand, remained still, and when her tremors stopped her hand was still locked in place.

"What the hell are you even saying?"

"At the end of time, there shall be only one perfect thing left. For this to come to pass, all that is imperfect must die. Death refines reality. To kill is beautiful; to die is just. You will kill with me, Atsuko, or you will die to make me more perfect."

Akko freed her wand from its clasp.

Diana pronounced a Word whose noise hurt Akko's ears and bleeding indigo flame spewed from Diana's wand. Akko turned, dove for the Shiny Rod, the flame licking her hair as she passed; she grabbed the haft and stumbled to her feet, running one way, the other, as Diana sprayed occult death at her.

Akko ran for the stairs, heart pounding in her chest. She skidded as she rounded the carpet, nearly tripping, fumbling down the stairs three steps at a time, nearly tripping again as she reached the first flight-

Diana appeared in a burst of darkness, wand at the ready.

Akko squealed in fear and clenched the Shiny Rod in hand. "Diana, please! I don't want to hurt you!"

"Then die in pain." She fired her attack spell.

Akko swung the Shiny Rod. Time slowed. " _Phaidorari Afairynghor_!" The rod transformed mid-swing into its axe shape, colliding with the noxious spell mid-air, dispelling its energies. She took the axe in both hands, awkwardly as she clamped her hand around her wand.

Something like a tiny star burst into being in Diana's free hand. She pitched it at Akko like a baseball; Akko hopped over the railing, landing with a thump that forced the breath out of her as the spell burst behind her with a noise like shredding paper.

Akko stumbled forward, the axe's tip dragging along the ground, and Diana leaped at her, wand in hand; in the light Akko saw the glint of a blade on the pommel, something new. She held up the Shiny Axe and caught the blade on it haft. Diana landed, Akko readied a swing, and Diana seized Akko's knee.

Screaming, Akko swung the blade at Diana's elbow; it bounced off in a spray of orange sparks, but it gave Diana pause as she pulled her hand away, and Akko swung again, two-handed, full-force, powering the blade through whatever defended Diana from its first strike and cleaving through her left shoulder, the blade embedding in the floor.

Diana's arm fell to the ground in a spray of what looked like tar and smelled like rat. Diana faltered, stumbling onto her back, feeling for her severed limb.

Akko turned and ran. As fast as she could, as far as she could, with no set direction, into the depths of the mansion, through corridors, through doors she slammed shut and latched behind her, until she could run no more and the Rod had long since returned to its original form.

She fell to her knees someplace cold and dark, lit only by far, strange lights. She dropped the Rod, she dropped her wand.

Her heart caught up to her head.

The noises she made were choked and harsh, til the dam burst at last and she bawled endlessly into her hands, lost and alone.

* * *

Diana held her arm to its socket and waited for her form to resume its shape.

Was this her body? This body, on Earth, in her ancestral mansion, moved as she moved in a dream. At the same time she felt suspended as if in lukewarm oil, unmoving, save for the seizures, or the separation of her arm. That she could feel acutely, along with its healing, severed muscles mating with their other halves, nerves singing like guitar strings broken in reverse.

She felt the words she had spoken, and she felt the presence of the Taken King, and she felt something older and farther still.

She addressed her master:

"Oryx, I am hurt."

Far away, on his osmium throne, the Taken King responded.

"Little thing, new Taken. It delights me to tell you that this is the first and least pain you will know."

"It's not the pain. It's my ability to carry on the mission."

"Little thing, this body is mine, not yours. If it falls, I will call it again, if it pleases me that I do. Your death is hidden well in me."

The shield repaired itself, stitching into a haze of orange before her eyes and vanishing from sight.

"You know what you must do. Gather your energies, if you must. Avoid the walking reminder of your first failure, if you must. Your power only grows. Their time only frays. You have time to distinguish yourself yet, little thing. Perhaps you will be a brilliant thing that presents the throat of your world to me. If not, it avails you to be the spark which ignites this place. Give me this planet or make it ready for taking."

"This world will be yours... tonight. When the Cavendish family's power belongs to me."

"See that it is, or be forgotten."

The Taken King spoke no more, and there was nothing left to heal.

Diana thought of the library, and vanished.

* * *

Croix flinched as a stray noodle slapped her goggles. She swore at herself for being scared by her own food, and swore at herself again when she realized it happened at least once a week. What are you, six?

It was almost a relief to be shaken out of her self-loathing reverie by her consoles screaming at her. Nested in her monitoring equipment in the New Moon Tower, nothing else could've swayed her, save perhaps Chariot coming to knock. But Chariot was busy today, brooding over Diana and Akko and whatever life-building exercise they were enjoying, and nobody else dared interrupt her studies.

Speaking of. She zoomed in on the map of emotional energy output. Wedinburgh, eh? That would be the Cavendish estate. Home to one of the most productive sorcerer's stones in the United Kingdom, and one of the most wasteful for how dead the place was nowadays. In the township near the Cavendish Manor, anger and anxiety spiked-over the football game, she presumed-but there was a pillar of energy coming off of Cavendish Manor, downright dead center. It wasn't the usual mana boiling off into the ether. It registered on the Triple S, but the color pattern was...

"Infra-Violet." Croix glared at her computer. "I don't remember programming you not to be funny. Come on, let's see what..."

Her fuel spirits in the area had all died. There was a lingering camera feed from a handful of them; patching the images together showed vague, impressionistic smears of black and white in suggestions of shrieking and agonized contortion.

After a moment, she dialed the headmistress.

"M'am," she said, "are you aware that the Cavendish estate is presently emitting huge amounts of magical radiation of a hitherto undiscovered type?"

* * *

Diana stared at the vine-robed pillar at the heart of the library. Around her, discarded in low pits, were one thousand and five hundred years of magic theory and practice, journals of medicine, anatomies of body and soul, invocations to every god who listened, beckons for every god that remained silent, diaries, notes, scrolls, confessions, hagiographies, memoirs, tomes whose names were only ever whispered, tomes whose names no witch dared pronounce aloud.

This place was redolent with magic. Wisdom had its own energy; the passions and discoveries in these pages were heavy with power.

Diana breathed into her palm; a lick of flame caught on her skin, which blackened and boiled at its touch. She knelt into one of the pits and pressed her hand against Wojciech's Manual of Harm Reduction. The last of its kind in all the world, centuries ahead of its time, and it burned beautifully.

In the smoke of dying wisdom, Diana dreamed of teeth and nothing else.

Around her, from the smoke, loomed forth a starving tide.

* * *

 _Author's Note:_ Can you find the Destiny quotes, LWA fans?


	2. The First Curse

_Chapter 2: The First Curse_

"...is when death becomes an afterthought." - anon.

* * *

When the tears subsided, and she could do something like stand and something like think, Akko tried to figure out where she was.

The place was musty; little blue torch-spirits dozed in sconces. Lucky little beasts. Was it a storage room? There were a lot of those tables on wheels, draped with white cloth. She edged towards one of them and peeked under the cover. She saw a glass box containing a golden, scale-patterned candle-holder.

She checked the others. A chess set... magic cookware... a rolled-up carpet, maybe... a moleskine journal... earrings, necklaces. Why the single-serving memento storage? Why the rolling carts? She could imagine easier ways to store things, unless they liked to take their stuff on walks now and-

Oh. Ohh. So they could wheel them out and sell them. She remembered when her mother had to sell her grandma's necklace because dad was between jobs and they needed a little more to pay rent. Akko had worked herself to the bone after school scrounging for recyclables and older neighbors that needed chores done, but still they had to let the necklace go. That was how mom put it: letting it go. She cried on the walk home from the antique store, hiding her face from strangers they passed on the street, but it had to be done. They needed their home.

"Is that why you came here, Diana?" Akko said to the audient void. She checked the last sheet.

There was a long alabaster box, its cover tilted at an angle. Inside was something she'd seen in collector's magazines and on fan wikis and in her feverish collector's dreams for years, _A Believing Heart Is Your Magic_. Her eyes widened, and for a moment the miasma of despair was outshone by sheer fannish excitement. The most rare and expensive and powerful of the Chariot cards. The Rich Kid's Win Button. The one with the artistic nude of Chariot cradling the Shiny Rod, serene and perfect, her familiar spreading its mighty wings and giving Chariot the appearance of a shining angel delivering a message of magical perfection.

(Had she touched herself while looking at pictures of that card? Why yes, thanks for asking.)

Who here could possibly have collected Chariot cards? It must have been one of Diana's sisters... no, weren't they cousins? They'd looked so much alike. Or at least their hair was so much alike. It was hard to tell otherwise, admittedly, Diana having eaten their eyes and lips-

The nauseated sorrow blotted out her higher thoughts once more. She couldn't look at the card, but she couldn't bear to cover it up. She wanted to throw up and desperately did not want to throw up anymore. She wanted to wake up and knock on Diana's door and tell her not to go home at any cost. She could make her believe, if she had the chance.

 _You know, like last night,_ a little thought said at the back of her mind.

She crept toward the door. It was too stifling in here to stay.

Her hand was at the knob when she heard the clicking footsteps.

* * *

Diana looked the bas relief of Beatrix in her closed, resting eyes. She had burned every book dry enough to feel the torch; those drowned she scoured with arcing bolts of electricity, blowing them apart in their stagnant graves; those enchanted, she blew their defenses apart with energies bleeding with the yawning empty terror of the void. The ceiling was choked with smoke.

"Oryx," Diana said, "do you know the history of the Cavendish family?"

If he listened, he did not respond, save in the form of another grand mal seizure. When her throat responded to her thoughts again, she continued.

"Beatrix Cavendish, one of the Nine Olde Witches, was the first of our number. She was a master of the healing arts; no human in the world could hope to match her skill and prowess. For one thousand and five hundred years we have laid down our lives in pursuit of healing. In war, we offered solace to the wounded and dying. In peace, we sacrificed mind and health in pursuit of greater wisdom." She licked her teeth, tasting a trapped string of Daryl's flesh. "Does it please you I am the sole inheritor of that name? I... who aspire to the title of Maw of Oryx."

Silence was her answer.

"My mother died of an illness she could not heal, contracted from a patient whose life she had saved. Is the patient more perfect for having killed my mother? Is the disease the took her life more beautiful for having killed Bernadette Cavendish?" She gazed into the tranquil smile on Beatrix's face. "Can you answer this, Taken King?"

She felt a stirring in her head.

"Love, little thing... I can scent it. You stand bereft of hope, and yet this remains in you."

"Does it displease you?"

"I love my son. I love my daughters. I love my sisters, though it has been long since they loved me. Love is strength. If something is worthy of your love, you must make it strong. What is the name of the mate you would take...?"

"You know, don't you?"

"Let me hear it, child."

"Atsuko... Kagari." The words were sweet venom on her lips.

"The one who wounded you."

"Yes..."

"She is strong. If you love her, make her stronger. You know what makes strength, aspirant Maw."

"I do."

"Then there are no questions to ask." The Taken King fell silent.

In swollen silence, Diana swore an oath, and signed it by blasting Beatrix's face from the pillar.

* * *

Akko pressed her ear against the door.

She couldn't tell how many there were, just that they were there, something moving in the hall. They sounded like dogs' nails. She heard sniffing and quick, ragged breaths. She held her own when she realized the sounds were just outside the door.

Please leave, please leave, please leave...

The knob turned. She seized it, tried to hold it in place, and whatever it was on the other side roared and slammed the door off its hinges, Akko trapped under it.

Again the wind was forced out of her, and she struggled to breathe as she tried to push the door off of herself. Whatever it was on top of her it was bigger and heavier and it wanted to stay where it was. It wriggled on top of the door, scratching at it, barking with harsh, throaty noises. Her vision was flecked with black spots. She needed a breath, she needed strength. But she had her wand, secure in its holster.

She couldn't speak, but she could force her throat to make the sounds, and hoped it was enough. "Metamorphie..."

The door was no longer pressing into a human teenager but the back of a tortoise. The door pitched and whatever it was on top rolled to the ground. Akko took a few deep, bracing breaths, and scooted from under the door into the hall as fast as her scrambling little legs could take her.

The monster flung aside the door and grabbed her, picking her up. She had another form for that, of course, and as she felt cold breath on her hind leg she cast the spell again.

The beast was crushed flat under the bulk of her elephant form. "Try'n squish me," Akko said, between gasps, "and you get squished. How's that for fair?"

Her round back was pressed against the ceiling, her head was stuck in the threshold, and her trunk picked up the smell of dry rot and dust with fantastic clarity. "Okay, now," she said, "let's just get back to normal..." She poofed back to her human form and looked at what she had just destroyed.

It had already crumbled to pulp and dust, a mass of white and gray-black with smears of brown, and the pulp and dust were shriveling to nothing as she watched. Well, that was convenient of it. She kicked at the dust and watched it burn to nothing in the air. Bless her heart, that didn't set off any warnings in her head.

What did was the cacophony of shrieks and howls down both ends of the hall.

"Oh, crap," she whispered, and cast her spell. _Poof,_ mouse form-she sprinted for the baseboards and ran along them. Please let this be inconspicuous, please let there be a mouse hole I can dart into, please let them discover pacifism at the last minute-

There were eight of them, four from each direction, loping down the hall, skidding to a halt when they came to each other. They sniffed each other, the air; they scented where one of theirs had died. They were tall as men, humanlike in shape, but they couldn't be human. Its arms, legs, and sides were plated with or made what looked like stained, ancient bone, pitted and cracked; their cores were a muddy brown color, made of flexible meat. There were six holes, two rows of three, clear through their torsos. Their heads were lipless, blunt-fanged, a bald dome streaked with smudges of white. They hissed, they clacked their teeth, they chuffed as they scented the air.

One leveled its eyeless head at her. She realized that she hadn't been running.

"Squeak," she said, casually, and ran. There! A mouse hole! Oh thank you God there's a mouse hole-

The one that scented her chased after her, clearing the yards of distance in a few long strides, and she felt one of its claws stroke her tail as she dove into the mouse hole.

When she stopped running, she was in the midst of a lightless, long-abandoned, tiny passage chewed by mice over long and silent centuries.

"Akko," she said to herself, "you really need to start thinking about where you run."

* * *

Andrew walked the streets of Wedinburgh, hating his father and himself.

He'd felt a flicker of hope when his father waited not only until the maid stopped thanking them, but until she was in her sister's house at the edge of town, before telling the driver to continue. But they'd arrived at the hotel, checked in, and waited in stony silence for an hour. Eventually, his father sent him out of the room while he performed some teleconference calls, and Andrew excused himself out into the street. His father had not returned his phone.

Wedinburgh proper was a clean, modern city with roots in tradition stretching back millennia, and so in his walk he had seen no pay phones or electronics shops. He could just walk in to the police department, he supposed, and tell them what was happening, and simply request anonymity, but the thought of having to explain it in person made him feel tiny and helpless. "You see, officer, a maid told us that there have been murders thanks to a curse, and I'm worried my friend we left there might be being murdered as we speak."

And so the plan was to find a place that sold cell phones, purchase a cheap one-he actually thought of it as a burner, like he was in an episode of Breaking Bad-and place an anonymous call. And all he had to do was to march past a city full of people seething over the ludicrous display last night, without so much as a phone-and why not just pic up a map, dammit? He cursed himself and he cursed his father and someone was pointing a gun at him.

"...pardon?" he said, his voice higher than anticipated.

A grizzled middle-aged woman, her hair gathered into a long, bunched ponytail, clad in flight leathers, and a vintage M1 Garand with a bayonet hanging from the mount, waved him on. "Move along, kid, nothin' to see... hey, waitaminute. You're that Hanbridge boy, ain'tcha?"

"H-hello?" he said, aware of how close the bayonet's tip was to his chest.

"For Mormo's sake, Nelson!" Prof. Finnelan said, seizing the gun by the barrel and pointing it down. "We're embarrassing ourselves enough as it is, don't menace him."

"Eat a dick, Finny, it's fun," Nelson said, shouldering the rifle.

"Why are you here?" Andrew said. "I mean-you're both teachers at Luna Nova, right?"

"Yes, we are, sir," Finnelan said. "Our newest addition to the staff has detected some manner of scientific hooliganism going on at the Cavendish estate, if you can believe that."

"Atsuko Kagari is there. There was a murder-one of the Cavendish maids said there was a murder. That Diana Cavendish had been cursed."

The two teachers stared at him.

"There was a murder," Finnelan said, anunciating very clearly, "and you left Ms. Kagari there. ... By Eihort's billion balls, _why?_ "

"Said it himself, he left Akko." Nelson's smile was missing a tooth. "We should hurry up, it's gotta be like a Home Alone sequel in there."

"My father insisted that..." He sighed. "That witches should take care of their own."

"Of course he would," Finnelan said, crossing her arms. "As it stands, we appear to be taking care of it ourselves. As soon as our young buck decides to get out of that damned shop."

Andrew looked up. The storefront's sign read WARDCLIFF FINE ELECTRONICS AND SUPPLIES. He looked between the witches and saw movement inside, someone cobbling together parts while floating Roombas paced around her. He looked back at Nelson's gun. "Do I want to know what's happening?"

"Says she needed some stuff to fine-tune her detectors," Nelson said. "And that I should keep people from nosin' in. So out comes Chief Wood'nhead." She pat the butt of the gun. "Let it be known, kid, you ain't gotta waste magic if something can be solved with a dose a' lead through the dome."

"You're just as bad as Mierides," said Finnelan. "It's not about efficiency, it's about propriety. A witch can solve her problems without resorting to physical force, much less lethal force."

"Propriety, proschmiety. If a knife can solve a problem, don't get a chainsaw!"

"While this is fascinating discourse," Andrew said, "is now seriously the time?"

"We're stuck here until Croix deigns show her face again," Finnelan said just as who Andrew presumed to be Croix stepped through the door, tall, handsome, and carrying something that looked tremendously scientific-one of the floating Roombas gutted and splayed, its electronics forming a halo of conductive metals through which Croix had woven silver filaments.

"Professors," Croix said, flipping up her goggles. "My tools are ready. Whatever we find there this little sucker should be able to take safe samples." She narrowed her eyes at Andrew. "And we have a guest. I thought I specifically told you to kill anyone who came too close, Nelson. Guess I'll have to do this one myself." One of her Roombas floated by her head, popping out an emitter of some sort.

"I'm a friend of Akko's," Andrew said. "She's in the mansion with the murderer... or whatever it is that's happening."

"Atsuko Kagari, in trouble." Croix chuckled. "I knew you were hiding her from me, Ursula."

Just behind her, Professor Ursula stood still, her expression dark. "I had my hopes she'd have escaped any trouble," she said.

"You're such a bad liar. Maybe you just keep wanting to tell the truth." Croix let the Roomba go and it whirred around her in a stable orbit, tilted at an angle and making choking, stuttering noises unlike the silent vacuum cleaners maintaining a stable position around her. "Either way, we've gotta go. Want to join us, kid?"

"Yes," he said.

So much for doing anonymous good under his father's gaze. To hell with him anyway.

One of the flying Roombas, a blue one, naturally, settled near his feet. "Hop on," Croix said. "By broom it'll just be a few minutes. It'd be faster by sorcery unit, but some of us insisted on the classics."

Finnelan didn't dignify that with a response.

Andrew stood on the sorcery unit, holding his breath. "Is there something I should be holding on-" The Roomba rose into the air, and to his surprise he had no problem keeping his balance. He may as well have been standing on solid ground while the world moved around him. "Ah, nevermind then."

Croix leaped onto her modified sorcery unit. "Come on, ladies. Time's a-wastin'."

"Wait," Andrew said. "On the edge of town, the very end of Tarlow Road. There's a woman who's worked in the Cavendish manor."

"And she called in sick today?" Croix said.

"No, she saw what was in there."

"Interesting. Very interesting. One more pit stop, girls!"

* * *

Akko flopped onto her soft, furry belly. Her jaws hurt, her nose was full of dust, and her ever-present hunger had been supplemented by an aching thurst. She'd fumbled and chewed and chased light, trying to find ways upward, and made herself more lost than she'd ever been. She didn't know how long a mouse could go without water but she hoped they could hold out a while.

"Come on," she said. "This house can't be that big. Even a mansion... it's gotta have limits."

She snuggled against the side of the mouse hole. "Not a single mouse, either. Did they all get out of here? ... Do they have a real good exterminator? Oh, man, I hope I haven't been walking through a magic mouse-kill-"

The tunnel reverberated with a massive thud. Another... she braced herself. There was a tremendous _crack,_ and shuffling, stony sounds, and-

The brick facade fell away and light hit her eyes for the first time in maybe an hour. She stared one of the eyeless monsters in the mouth. It had changed a little since last she saw it-its mouth was caked with dried gore and strips of meat.

"Don't you dare," she said, and the beast seized her with a three-taloned hand, squeezing her tight. Its jaws shook, it clacked its teeth at her and rancid breath washed over her; instead it bit down on a bony spur that jut from its arm and carried her away at arm's length, its body low to the ground as it loped through the halls. Akko let her eyes adjust to the light and tried to command her heart to stop beating so damn fast. You got this, Akko, you got this...

 _Hey, hey's not trying to kill you,_ she thought. _Maybe you could ride this out, let it give you some purpose! He's just trying to bring you somewhere! Or to someone._

 _Like Diana._

"Aw, crap..." Akko said. The monster squeezed her. "Me... Metamor-" It pressed a claw into her mouth as she spoke, pressing its blunt talon all the way into her throat. She couldn't speak; moreover, she couldn't breathe.

She was less panicky about it than she should, to her surprise, or maybe that was due to having a giant bony claw shoved down her throat, scratching it from the inside, and having something more immediate to worry about. She closed her eyes and wept and tried to will the spell into completing without words.

When her lungs began to burn, the monster loosened its grip and flung her to the floor. She tumbled end over end a few turns, but she could breathe and her throat wasn't bleeding-

"Metamorphie faciesse!" she gasped, and her last tumble was in human shape, spinning along her back and landing on her backside, again. She had her wand and the Rod in hand, and she was ready to-

A wand pressed into her neck. Cold radiated from the arm that held it. Akko opened her eyes.

Diana stood over her. "That was a nice try, Atsuko. I remember when you could barely fumble through metamorphosis magic, and yet today you cowered from the Thrall in the walls of my home. But they're more clever than you realize and none may hide their scent from the Thrall for long."

Akko glimpsed around her. She was in what she had to guess was a ballroom-tall ceiling, dusty mirrors and paintings, room for tables and a band and what she mainly noticed were what had to be at least two dozen of what Diana called Thrall. They were hunched around something and eating. She didn't want to think about what.

"Are you gonna kill me now?" Akko said.

"I won't have to if you listen."

"Okay... listening."

"Drop your wand and the Shiny Rod."

"Okay. Done listening. Go ahead 'n kill me." She closed her eyes and wondered how long it would take her mother to find out she was dead.

"That will come later. First you will learn the shape of no hope."

Akko felt the air shudder around her; she peeked just enough to see Diana forming one of her grenade spells in her free hand. She twisted away from Diana's wand, raised her own, pronounced the first syllable of a blast spell, and Diana crushed the star in her hand.

The paper-shredding sound filled her ears, and she finished the spell, and nothing happened. The Shiny Rod felt heavy, too heavy, as though it were suddenly filled with lead. She shook her wand at Diana, casting again and again: "Fusilo! Murowa! Pyroshale! Fusilo _Maxima_!"

A Thrall grabbed her arm and sank its teeth into her forearm; she mewled, hanging on to her wand as she ran through every attack spell she could remember, the Thrall gnawing on her arm 'til one of her bones snapped. She dropped her wand at last, and Diana swat the Thrall with her wand. It released Akko's arm unhappily and slunk away, licking its teeth. Akko cell to her side, curling up around the too-heavy Shiny Rod, holding tight.

"Have you no dignity at all?" Diana said. "You run from me, you hide in the guise of a vermin, and here you are, clutching a toy and crying like a child at your first taste of pain." She kicked Akko's wand to the side and stood over her. "I thought you were better than this."

Now would've been a great time for a speech. Akko couldn't think of any.

"Look at you. Pathetic. In agony over a little bite..." She kneeled and touched Akko's wounded arm. Akko whimpered and covered it with her other arm, curling yet tighter around her artifact. Diana took her bloodied fingers to her mouth and tasted them.

She thought all pleasure had been removed. But like love, this she managed to keep in the transition from human to Taken. Akko's blood was so hot it steamed on her grave-cold fingers, its taste rich and redolent of pennies and nails and bitter fear. She was horny, desperately so, and she shivered in perverted glee, so hard another grand mal seizure overtook her. She fell onto her side, incapable of supporting herself, and contorted and jittered, face to face with her beloved.

Akko watched her through tear-drowned eyes and sobbed. It was too much to hope this was a nightmare. This was hell. She had to be in hell.

* * *

"Emotional pattern ultramarine," Croix said. "Been a while since I've seen this much blue, this close."

The four witches and guest hovered above the roof of Cavendish manor. The place had been renovated fairly recently, or at least the hovering orbs of rippling, oily darkness partially embedded in the walls or hanging in eerie stillness looked fairly new.

"What does that mean?" Ursula said, wand in hand.

"We have a survivor and they're not having a good time." Croix whistled and her sorcery units swiveled parallel to the ground, guns ready.

"Are you sure you won't be hurting Ms. Kagari?" Finnelan said.

"Please. Combat plasma discharge is no matter for amateurs," Croix said. "And there will be combat. I can taste it." The sorcery units fired on low energy output, softening up the roof and preparing it to fragment rather than fall as a chunk.

"Should I stay back...?" Andrew said.

"Probably a good idea. Unless Nelson has an extra gun!"

"Of course I do," Nelson said, fishing out a pistol from a holster on her belt and tossing it at Andrew, who to his credit caught it effortlessly, avoiding the trigger. "Line it up so the little sights are all square, put the middle bead where you wanna shoot, squeeze the trigger. And use both hands, fer chrissake, I can smell the newbie on ya."

"Can do," Andrew said, leaning back, his sorcery unit taking the hint and gliding away from the witches.

* * *

Diana groaned. "Atsuko..."

"Don't," Akko said. "Don't say my name. Ever again. You're not you anymore. You're some..." She couldn't finish it.

"Something better," Diana said. "I have no doubts," she lied. "No hesitation. No limits. You could be here with me, Atsuko. Bound together in-"

The roof exploded. The Thrall barked and howled their displeasure as dust and chunks of wood and stone and ancient plaster and tile hailed onto them. Diana hopped to her feat, the contortions of her body lurching in useful ways to accomplish this. Akko crawled towards her wand and snatched it, shaking it as if to try and force the magic to kick in, wincing as her broken bone moved in her arm.

A broom-riding witch careened through the dust cloud, rifle in hand. "Happy New Year!" Prof. Nelson said, taking a potshot at one of the Thrall. Its head burst with a dry _crack_ and its body immolated in moments. "Hot damn, that one-" She saw Diana's incoming spell and darted out of the way. "Ooh, baby, it's interestin' already!"

Diana answered the taunt with a shriek. Three other witches plummeted in-Finnelan, Callistis, Meridies, all armed and ready. "Akko!" shouted Ursula, crouching over her broom and flying towards her.

Akko swung the Shiny Rod at Diana's head, but it bounced off her energy shield, not so much as denting it. Ursula flew by, snatching her up in the crook of her arm, a trio of Thrall lunging at her broom as she flew in range. Two latched on, one at the front near the mana cap, one hanging from her leg.

She flew up toward the ceiling, turning upside-down; "Trudo!" she cast on the monster at the front, the spell shoving it off. She winced as the second monster bit into her thigh.

Akko aimed her wand and shouted: "Fusilo! Marowa! Pyroshale-"

She felt it, thank God, she felt the connection of intent to arm, and the monster hanging on Chariot burst into flame; it fell, shrieking, and burned to ash before it hit the floor. Her damaged arm felt like she'd jammed stakes into it, but that was a far-away thought right now.

"Good shot," Ursula said, propping Akko behind her. "Hold tight, we're getting you out of-" A bolt of lightning streaked past Ursula's broom. "Son of a-!"

Diana wove a storm of lightning in the air overhead, trying to force the witches closer to the ground and into her void-bolts. The Thrall paced and scuttled on the ballroom floor, some vaulting for the columns along the dance floor. "I've got Diana!" Croix shouted, directing her sorcery units to fire on Diana. They leveled their guns at her, spewing bursts of plasma at her; Diana dove and rolled and spun between the splashes of energy, maintaining her storm-spell.

Finnelan and Nelson focused on the Thrall. Finnelan hurled binding spells, wrapping the bone-plated monsters in vines that burst from the ground and locked them in place, silk sheets woven from thin air around the monsters, tying them in struggling bundles on the dance floor. Nelson mainly shot them as that seemed to be working fine, especially the ones that were getting sassy and leaping at the witches from the columns.

Ursula flew between the net of lightning, looking for gaps in activity big enough to fly up, towards the hole leading out to the darkening sky. Akko held on tight, but she was looking at Diana, not the way out. "Ursula, we have to help her."

"Is she cursed, Akko? Do you know?"

"It has to be. She's... done things... said things..."

Ursula grit her teeth. "We might... but we have to get her to stop shooting!"

"The third Word," Akko said. "If I can catch her, maybe, maybe then..."

Nelson ejected the en-bloc clip and shoved a fresh one inside; before she could complete the transaction a Thrall hurtled through the air and latched onto her. She held tight, but lost her grip on her broom and fell, cracking her shoulder on the floor. She pushed herself up, the Thrall crumbling to ash on the edge of her bayonet. "Alright, enough of this," she said, cycling the bolt, shouldering the rifle, and shooting at Diana.

The bullet struck her energy shield and ricocheted, but the impact shocked her out of her reverie, and a few bolts of plasma struck her shield, revealing its glow and testing its strength. Croix smirked as her sorcery units fenced her in at last.

"Now!" Ursula said, steering through the slackening lightning storm. The fine hairs on her arm stood on end as she passed through ionized air, a snap of electricity discharging in their wake.

Akko clenched her thighs around Ursula's broom and swung the Shiny Rod. " _Arae Aryhra!_ " The Rod burst into a fountain of green light, spiraling and enveloping Diana, solidifying into a six-pronged clasp, four pinning her arms to her body, two anchoring her to the ground.

"Finnelan, over here!" Ursula said. "We're finishing this curse here and now!"

Finnelan gripped her broom and flew towards her.

"Little help here?!" Nelson said, her bullets running dry as more Thrall raced toward her. Croix pointed and some of the sorcery units fired at the monsters, killing three in plumes of flaming ash and driving off the rest. The remaining Thrall cowered in cover or gnawed at their confinements. "Thanks, you crazy bitch."

Andrew looked in. The air felt charged still, but the thunderstorm had died down. Deciding now was better than never, he descended, aiming the gun as best he could against one of the Thrall peering from behind a column at the witches.

"Luna Lana?" Finnelan said, gathering her energies.

"Of course," Ursula said, bracing for the fusion spell.

Akko struggled to maintain a grip on her weapon with one arm. Diana was fighting back not with physical violence-though she did jitter uncontrollably in its grasp-but by radiaing black magic. Akko could feel the energies creep through the thick cable connecting the grapples to the haft of the Shiny Rod, an itching tingle that felt like bugs gnawing at her skin. "Diana, please, let this happen. We're going to save you!"

Diana kept her silence. Finnelan and Ursula crossed wands. "Ein ein sof!" Finnelan said.

"Ein sof ohr!" said Ursula.

"Aye mak sicur," cooed Croix, rising behind the three of them. A quartet of sorcery units flew into formation at their sides and funneled magic into the nullifaction spell.

Andrew hovered as close to the ground as he dared, watching in awe as magic energy gathered into a golden light surrounding the witches.

" _Luna Lana!_ " Twin spirals of golden light burst from their wands and streaked towards the entrapped Diana.

Diana vanished from within the grapple before the spell struck her.

She reappeared behind them, in a moment of freefall, a white star in her outstretched hand. She crushed it.

The sound of shredding paper filled their ears and their magic was sealed.

Presently everything went to hell.


	3. The Shape of Victory

_Chapter 3: The Shape of Victory_

"I think joy and sorrow will be the same thing soon. Like love and death." - The Books of Sorrow, XXIII: fire without fuel

* * *

In the instant the witches felt gravity return, they each spoke.

"What in blazes...?!" said Finnelan.

"Oh no," Ursula said, barely a whisper.

"Aw, piss!" Croix said, fumbling to rescue her modified sorcery unit from its impending doom.

Akko stayed silent and held on to Ursula.

Ursula, bearing Akko aloft, landed on her feet, lightly and without complaint. Croix landed on her ass Akko-style, which smart like a bastard, but her sorcery unit was spared damage. Finnelan took the landing worst, spraining her ankle and hopping on one foot, broom in hand.

Diana landed behind them. "Drink deep." The charged air descended upon them and the lightning struck. A web of lightning tore through all four of them, shattering Finnelan's broom and frying Croix's sorcery units. Their screams were a hideous chorus.

"Oh, fuck that!" Nelson said, flipping her wand ready and shooting a flaming dart between Finnelan and Ursula's heads and into Diana's face. She caught fire magnificently, the shield swiftly losing cohesion as she fell back. The spell ceased and the three witches stumbled away from her, Croix holding tight to her destroyed sorcery unit, Finnelan hurling spells that just wouldn't cast behind her.

The Thrall bayed and lept free from hiding or finished chewing and clawing free of their bonds. The bony tide raced for the fleeing witches, and Nelson raised a curtain of fire behind them. "What was that?!" Andrew said, bringing his still-functioning sorcery unit to the ground and jumping off it, his pistol pointed in the air.

"It's a curse!" Akko said. "Seals magic! It sucks, but it'll wear off!" Akko said once she could feel her tongue.

"How soon?!" Ursula said, skidding to a halt, however briefly."

"It took... a couple minutes..." Akko said.

"Of course it did," Croix said.

"Get outta here," Nelson said, side-stepping her friends. "I got this." She raised her rifle and shot the Thrall courageous enough to vault over the flames. She whistled and her broom skid across the floor at her side.

"The library! Meet us at the library!" Ursula shouted. Croix commanded the surviving sorcery unit to her side.

"Got it!" Nelson said, hopping onto her broom. "Tia fayre!" She took to the air, hovering above the line of sight of the wall of flame. "Come and get me, zombie boys."

Diana walked through the flames; her shield, which had been slowly healing, flickered and died once more, her body licked by fire. She opened her mouth to speak, and Nelson fired a round at her cyclopean eye, and to Nelson's great delight, Diana's head bucked backwards from the impact, foul blood spurting from the light. "Oh, you felt that!" She squeezed the trigger again, again, forcing Diana back towards the flame. "Burn for me, bitch! Not so tough now, are you?!"

Diana held her arm over her vulnerable eye, in agony but not dead yet-and what was agony to her now but the act of existing? She invoked the lightning.

Nelson felt the charged air build and zipped out of the way. "Learn a few new tricks, you-" she said, before the force of the storm was directed entirely upon her. Electricity raced through her bones and muscles, through her nerves, her brain, and she had to hand it to her, she didn't see this coming.

At some point during the attack Diana flicked one of those purple bolts at her broom, blasting off the cap and sending her plummeting. Nelson had to surmise this after the fact, on the ground and giving off sparks and wondering why she wasn't in the air. She felt for her wand and gun, and found neither before the Thrall were upon her. They hoisted her up, two on each arm. Nelson kicked and swore and refused to give them the satisfaction of screaming or crying or begging.

Diana was before her. "Noble," she said. "But not noble enough."

"Fuck you, you hoity-toity bitch," Nelson said, spitting in her eye.

Diana stepped aside, and a Thrall crept up to the captive Nelson. Nelson kicked it in the gut, which it felt, and responded by feeling for join between Nelson's leather jacket and her pants. It found the barest gap, in which it slid its finger and dragged it across.

"Gettin' fresh with me, you-"

The Thrall reached its claw inside Nelson and tugged out her intestines. Blood poured out of her in a thick torrent, soaking her legs.

Blackness overtook her vision. The Thrall fell upon her and tore her apart. In her last moments of consciousness, she prayed for death.

It was not death that took her.

The bolus of Thrall untangled, charnel keepsakes of the departed Professor Nelson in their jaws.

* * *

You are Professor Adrian Nelson. Flight instructor of Luna Nova Academy. Nothing in the world can outfly you, nothing. The kids love you and the paycheck keeps you fed.

You have been taken.

Rest your head. Sink into the long, warm night. Your demons will scream at you no longer.

What fears steal your sleep from you? What thoughts do you drown in bitter liquor?

You could have been one of the greats, but a snapped femur killed those professional dreams and a few loose words spoken while in your cups buried them. You teach because you could never achieve. Any hope for a second chance has faded with age, the teaching of children blunting your edge. You've lost your energy and bruise with every bump. You know what's coming and you poison yourself more.

You can't be young again. But they can know, at last, what it means for time to slip away.

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [you will ache like I ache].

Take up the knife. Count the number of their days. Take your new shape.

* * *

"This sucks," said Croix, straining as she shoved a massive hardwood bookcase in the way of the door. "This sucks this sucks this sucks _this sucks this sucks!_ "

"No, tell us what you really think," Finnelan said.

"Shut the hell up you old bat," Croix said, resting against the bookcase. "Today has gone straight to hell hard enough, I don't need any backtalk."

They had ran as far as they could, Finnelan and Akko sharing the sorcery unit to speed them along. Croix had singled this place, a study on the first floor, out as a likely origin point for the strange matter she'd detected; if they were going to cower, they may as well do some reading while they waited.

The interior of the mansion was starting to reflect the outside. Matching the orbs of liquid dark coalescing outside the estate were pools of liquid on the walls and floors and ceiling that seemed to be patches of alien starlight, strange constellations winking and staring into them. This study, at least, was untouched, and did not have a corpse in it at some point, judging by the lack of streaks of dried blood that told the stories of the servants' quarters.

Andrew, on Croix's command, had set his gun on the table and went leafing through the books on display, waving them at the sorcery unit, which Croix had bolted the customized unit to the bottom of. Finnelan took a couch, resting her ankle, which didn't seem too hurt, thank Mormo. Akko and Ursula shared a comfy chair in front of the fireplace, which had a slumbering fire spirit emitting just enough warmth to make a difference. Akko had quietly insisted on seating herself in Ursula's lap while the healing potion went to work on her arm. She hadn't said a word about Ursula's hair turning red. Not yet.

"What are we gonna do?" Akko said.

"We'll have to pin her down somehow," Ursula said. "We'll need to isolate her in space... something that'll cancel her teleport effect."

"Is that something you can do?"

"I think," Ursula said.

Akko sniffled. "I believe in you. Like Chariot said, that's our magic."

Ursula smiled grimly. "Like she said."

Croix bristled. She was in the mood to rip the band-aid off and tell Akko everything out of sheer pre-mortem spite. That was the anger talking; to hell if she was gonna lower her chances of survival even further by riding that particular trope train to the end of the line.

Finnelan checked her wand, casting a light spell. Nothing. "You said how many minutes, Ms. Kagari?"

"I don't know. Like three," Akko said. She checked her wand and cast a basic light spell without a hitch-though she did it with her left hand this time. No use poking her finger into the wound.

"The duration may be proportional to the strength of the user," Croix said. "So that's fun."

"How do you think that scales?" Ursula said. "Linearly?"

"Let's hope. I'd hate to go without my magic all night." The temperature seemed to drop, just a hair. "So. Just to clear the air, who has heard anything like this happening before?"

"Never in anything real," Finnelan said. "This is like something out of _Prince of Darkness._ "

"Akko," Andrew said, "what all did you see before we came here?"

Akko gave them a run-down, her voice low and uncertain. "She said a name... 'The Taken King.' Does that sound like anything you've heard of?"

The room fell to silence, save for the whir of the sorcery unit.

"The Taken..." Croix snapped her fingers. "I think, maybe."

"That's a new one to me," Finnelan said. "Is it from one of your scientific treatises you keep trying to add to the library?"

"One, _The Mythical Man-Month_ isn't a 'treatise.' Two, entirely the opposite. It's from the _al Azif,_ thank you very much."

Finnelan clucked her tongue. "Not dignifying it with the popular name, I see."

"The popular name is the _Anarchist's Cookbook_ for witches. The oldest translations are..."

"Please," Ursula said. "Get to the point."

"So," Croix said, "among all the other witch-gods he claimed were aliens, he mentioned the Hive Gods. Oryx, the Taken King, was one of them. There was only so much he could do given his lack of proximity to Earth, but Alhazared theorized that there would be ways to close the gap and bring him closer. He also anticipated his emissaries would be arriving before the millenium was out."

"...and?" Finnelan said.

"That's it."

"Magnificent. Nothing on method, nothing on style?"

The sorcery unit chirped loudly; Croix hissed at it and the alarm silenced. Andrew was putting something away.

"What is that?" Croix said.

"Just a jar," he said, bringing the item off the shelf. It was an empty bell jar with a delicate set of wire armatures inside, designed to prop something off. There was a placard on the base, just inside the glass; Croix walked up and read it out loud.

"'Preserved abnormal dragon fetus.' Associated with a mass death in the Ottoman Empire, under the resumption of the reign of Mustafa I after being deposed for alleged mental insecurity... yadda yadda... long story short, guy held on to a dragon miscarriage 'til it spoke to him. When he was deposed, the people who kicked him out were seized by all sorts of crazy shit, which a Cavendish apparently resolved. The fetus was plated in silver... 'Plating the abnormal dragon fetus in silver helped to quiet the auditory hallucinations.'" Croix clicked her tongue, and the sorcery unit clicked back. "And there's trace silver dust gathered at the bottom here."

"The plating wore off?" Ursula said.

"Or one of the Cavendishes stripped the plating off."

"...why?" Finnelan said.

"Well, they've been auctioning off family artifacts," Akko said. "I saw some tables in a storage room. Maybe she took the silver off to sell on the side?"

"...really?" Finnelan said, boggling at Akko. "That's your theory?"

"I mean, it's more money. If it's a dragon baby it would've sold for a bunch anyway. And if nobody else knew it was covered in silver, well, silver's expensive..."

"You know," Croix said, "I would have no doubt that's what happened."

"They are... they _were_ very pressed for money," Ursula said.

Croix affixed the jar to the base. "So, there was trace silver... and hadronic essence, and ascended shards. Whatever is happening, it started with this." She set the jar back on the shelf. "This leads to questions two and three. Why Diana? Why now?"

* * *

Three servants knelt before Diana, bearing her tribute.

In the talons of the first Thrall, hovering a hair's breadth above its palms, was Nelson's liver, the most satiating and nutritious of her organs. Diana took this tithe.

In the talons of the second Thrall, hovering a hair's breadth above its palms, was Nelson's heart, as tough and withered as the woman herself. Diana took this tithe.

In the hands of Professor Nelson, each peeking up from her palm, were Nelon's eyes, brown as old earth and still as keen as when she was a child. Diana took these as tithe.

"How are they?" Nelson said, her voice slurred. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. Blood, or something like it, pulsed in her temples. Her guts dangled over her thighs, wet and warm and comfortable. They soothed the tremors in her thighs. It made the pain that much worse, how hilarious was that? The slightest of comfort was like a rock salt massage.

Diana sipped the string of nerves and vessels between her lips, chewing. "I taste your new dedication."

"Heh. Well, like the song goes... roll with the changes, eh?"

The Thrall fed on her suffering flesh; Diana on her suffering soul; and the Taken King, far away on his osmium throne, on the suffering of everyone in that cursed mansion, Hive and Taken and human. In this way did they feed the worm.

* * *

"So that's why she was so eager to leave," Akko said. She picked at the bandage over her arm; the injury was almost gone. The pain had subsided into a vague itching.

"And she walked right into some space-devil trap," Croix said. Andrew had, in his searching, found a bottle of Chateau de Montifaud in a hollowed-out encyclopedia; Croix supplied cups from the sorcery unit's storage otherspace, and poured out a finger for everyone present. The crew gathered around Finnelan's couch for the impending toast. "And that leads to our present crisis."

"We can't let her complete the ritual," Ursula said. "That much is clear."

"We have a timeline, we have a MacGuffin. And if Alhazared was right, we have an endgame for the bad guys."

Finnelan maintained silence but raised her cup. "To the end of this," she said, and all present, Akko and Andrew included, raised their cups and drank. Akko flinched at the burn of the cognac, but managed to force it all down, feeling like she'd just swallowed fire. Andrew had no issues whatsoever.

"I should start carrying assorted glassware in my S.U.s," said Croix, licking the inside of her glass. "Shame to put a 97th percentile cognac in a tumbler." She poured herself a little more cognac.

There was a knock at the door. "Hey. Hey!"

Nelson's voice.

Ursula covered her mouth; Finnelan and Croix held their poses, as if they'd been seen. Akko wondered why they were so on edge, but kept her silence.

"Guys, you in there?" More knocking. "Been going up and down this stupid mansion knockin' on all the doors. You can't imagine how many friggin' doors there are."

Akko tried to remember if there were any doors on the way to the study close enough that she'd have heard Nelson knocking and asking for help. She watched Andrew inch over to the endtable where the gun Nelson gave him lay. Croix downed her glass in an instant.

"It's cool, guys. I sorted out Diana. She's alright, just needed a little sense beaten into her. It went great. Hell, you could've stuck around, gotten your share of that XP, know what I mean?"

Finnelan drew her wand and muttered the smallest spell she knew. A light flickered at the edge of her wand, but soon guttered. She snarled to herself, but climbed onto her feet anyway.

"Sure, whatever, kick back, relax. I got time. We all got time."

"Can they all do that teleport-thing?" Croix whispered. "Or is that just Diana?"

"Like I would know?" Ursula said.

"I'm thinking out loud, I think out loud when I'm nervous," Croix said.

"You're nervous?" Akko said. "She sounds o... wait. Do you think-"

"Come on, guys. Really? Lockin' me out just 'cuz you think I'm a spook?" Nelson laughed. "Alright, whatever! No skin off my back. See you all later. Gonna head back to town and drink 'til I piss blood."

"If we want to be optimistic," Finnelan said, "she's not talking any differently."

"We can't afford to be optimistic," Croix said. "If the Venusian eclipse is happening soon, Diana has a window to act in. Presuming that's what she's going for, presuming that's what she wants to do."

"So what are we gonna do?" Akko said, barely audible. She clenched the Shiny Rod so tight her knuckles blanched. Andrew sidled up next to her, taking aim at the door, if that could help at all.

"I can hear you, by the way," Nelson shouted. "These new ears of mine are killer."

"Shit," Croix said. She held out an expectant hand and her sorcery unit hovered under her hand; she decoupled the sensory one and let it drop to the floor.

"'Shit' is right." Nelson laughed. "Can't believe I was with you people just... Christ, a few minutes ago? A few hours? Time... time got a little weird."

"What happened to you?" Ursula said.

"You wanna know, huh?" Something cracked on the other side of the door. "Hah... I bet you wanna know." There was a choking gurgle. "Fuck. This won't stay down." Breaking glass, a splash. "Always a catch with this shit, isn't there."

"What is the curse?" Croix said. "Humor us." She flipped the cognac bottle around in her hand, getting a feel for its weight.

"Fuck you, science bitch," Nelson said. "I hope the Thrall choke on your guts. How's that for an explanation? Huh? Finnelan, I hope the Thrall got cocks so they can-"

"You shut your damned mouth you lout!" Finnelan said, trying desperately to force magic to flow through her wand again.

"For the love of Mormo, people," Ursula hissed, "this is what she wants!"

"To piss you off? Hell yeah, that's what I want! Hearin' you piss your panties, hearin' you pray to shitty little gods. You're alone here and you're gonna die crying to your mamas... or you join the winning team. Like I did." She laughed again. "Took a little persuadin'! Oh boy, I needed to be persuaded. But I'm through the other side and everything just... God, it makes so much sense now."

"What makes sense?" Croix said.

"You wanna know so bad?"

"Well, you keep almost-telling us."

"'Cause words ain't gonna do it justice, 'specially not from me, and 'specially not for that retard Akko."

"Hey!" Akko stammered. "I'm-errgh...!"

"Oh, that got her! Ha, is she turning red? Is that little Jap bitch blushing like she took a sip of beer? You gotta tell me-"

Ursula vaulted over the couch; Andrew pointed his gun away as she stood before the door. "Nelson." Her voice was steel.

"What, I say the wrong thing to your child bride, Princess Pedo?"

Ursula grabbed the massive bookshelf, hoisted it, and hurled it through the door, obliterating it and doing a number on the brick wall opposite the study door.

"Holy shit," Akko whispered.

Finnelan's eyes bugged. "...Ur... Ursula...?"

"She's looking a little familiar now, isn't she?" Croix said, almost giggling. "That's the spirit, baby. Show 'em what you-"

Nelson piroetted into view like a mock ballerina. The sight of her was so grotesque it froze the people in the room in place; in being Taken, her last moments were preserved in dreamlike detail. Torn open, her innards were spayed and drifting out of the black mantle of her chest like the fins of a betta fish, aflame with unlight-with deadlight. Under her burning cyclopean eye gleamed a terrible smile.

"Nice throw," she said. She leveled the gun-though it was not of human make, it could only be a gun-at Ursula.

* * *

Diana stood on one of her attackers' abandoned brooms, regarding the scarred moon.

The time was drawing nigh. Venus would vanish behind the moon, and the way to her destiny would open. Her awful family were dead; their heads hung totemic in her cloak, reminders of the depths to which her family name had sunk. Now she would tear out its throat and let it die utterly, and the new Cavendish name would be written on the stars in hot blood.

On the shore, bowing to her from afar, the Thrall lay in worship and waiting.

Beneath the waves slumbered the power of the Cavendish family.

She was terrified.

* * *

Ursula moved, dodging to the left; Nelson fired, and the bolt of violet force that tore free from the front of her alien gun sheared her arm off mid-bicep. Whatever acrobatic move she was going to pull off stopped; eyes wide, mouth agape, she skidded to a stop on her left shoulder.

Akko screamed some angry word and vaulted over the couch. Croix shouted, but it wasn't what she meant to say: instead of "Akko, stop!" she said "Chariot, you stupid bitch!" And in the time it took to say that Nelson aimed at Akko and Andrew shot at her head and struck her elbow. Nelson lacked Diana's energy shield; the bullet passed straight through the bone and threw off her aim and the next bolt sheared just past Akko's head, lighting her hair on fire, and crashed into the mantle of the fireplace, awakening the fire spirit in fright.

Nelson flinched, grit her teeth, and ran forward. She felt underwater, everything so slow, so measured. She checked Akko in the shoulder, hurling her behind her; she swung her gun toward Ursula again, teeth grit, ready to shoot, and Croix's little flying tuna can intercepted itself between her shot and her target, and it died a hero's death. She heard Andrew's suppressed .45 Colt-her own, goddammit, and that suppressor had been expensive and a pain in the ass to get into Britain-and felt the bullet impact in her head. But not through the eye, so she was alright... ish... and so she swung the gun around, with a mind to lay a bead on his chest.

Finnelan smashed a lamp over the back of her head. Her reverie was interrupted. "You piece'a-" Nelson said, before Finnelan grabbed onto her and stabbed her in the back, again and again, with the stubby remains of the lamp, shouting truly unladylike words in her ear.

She saw Croix rearing back to throw a bottle at her, No, m'am. She flexed her new muscle and in a moment to make her college self proud-and her high school self, let's not lie at this late hour-she vomited a scalding tar onto Croix, sending her, screaming and cursing, interposing herself between Nelson and Ursula. Andrew's gun was still on her, the stupid bastard breaking out in sweat, and she fought Finnelan over the shredder, firing off a few shots into the wall, unaware how close she came to killing Akko as she cast her spell.

"LET GO!" Croix shouted.

"Fuck off!" Nelson snarled, and felt Finnelan's grip on her arm fall away as the flames burst across her clothes. She blinked, a useless reflex with an unblinking eye of Taken flame. Croix threw the bottle at her, and she batted it away with the shredder, and Andrew shot her in the eye.

Pain bloomed from her weak point, the eyeflame guttering, and Finnelan struck her with a full-sized standing lamp. Akko screeched " _Fusilo maxima!_ " and little bursts of light tore into her Taken form, and Andrew fired, again and again, until his gun ran dry, and she tried to shoot that stupid, stupid bastard, but her arm was gone, her vision graying, her

* * *

Diana regarded the site of the ritual: nine columns rising from the waters of the lake, eight pillars in a circle around the central ninth, a statue of a unicorn atop it, the family sorcerer's stone set as its horn, rotating gently in the moonlight.

If the spirit of her house was listening, she was more than eager to speak.

"I am Diana Cavendish, Aspirant Maw, and tonight you will grant me dominion over the House of Cavendish, in the name of Oryx, the Taken King, voice of the Deep, whose seat is the Osmium Throne.

"If you refuse, your pain will feed well the Virtuous Worms. As recorded in the Books of Sorrow, XXIII:3:3: 'And what is that final shape? It is a fire without fuel, burning forever, killing death, asking a question that is its own answer, entirely itself. That is what we must become.' I have become, and I will take what will make me more perfect."

If the spirit of the house heard, it did not speak.

The silence of Oryx was a lesson; the silence of her house was an insult.

* * *

Nelson shrieked and her mass collapsed into her head as though her body was so much smoke drawn into a vacuum. The alien weapon clattered where her feet had been and rotted away like a Thrall.

Andrew lowered the gun, hand shaking. "Is she dead?" he said.

Akko spat on the ashes of her gun. "She better be," she said.

Croix threw off her cloak and tried to focus. The black shit seeping into her skin caught fire in her blood, as if she'd downed half that Montifaud bottle. Focusing was difficult and goddammit she needed to focus. "Bandage... fuck, where are the bandages?"

"bag" said Chariot, hand clamped over her stump, blood soaking through. "in bag"

Croix kept swearing with every exhale as she fumbled through Chariot's stupid little fanny pack of medical supplies. Akko was suddenly at her side. "Oh, shit, kid, where'd you-"

"You're hurt. Let me do this." Akko was firm.

"Okay... you know what to do?"

"I took first aid," Akko lied. When she was eight she read about how some of the greatest broom-riders in history had lost their limbs, and memorized all the steps in amputation first aid just in case, refreshing her knowledge every few months just in case the official byline had changed.

So Chariot's head was laid flat on the ground, Andrew fetching her blankets from inside an ottoman and pillows pulled from the couches to prop up her legs, while Akko soaked Chariot's tightly-bound wound with healing potion and placed her hands tight around the stump. Finnelan tried to clean Croix of Nelson's vomit attack, the stuff having stained her skin and clothes where it fell.

"No burning?" Croix said. "Like, burn scars, dead nerves..."

"None that I can tell," Finnelan said. The last healing potion she dabbed on Croix's wounds. Her skin brightened just a bit, but she would wear the stain for a while.

"I feel like I just slammed back a twelve pack. Do you know Nelson's sobriety beam spell?"

"No," Finnelan said, lips pursed. "By Mormo, I should've asked. I always thought it was cheating the way she used it to... to cheat out of all those long drunk Sundays."

"Of course you thought it was cheating," Croix said. "I'm surprised you use magic at all."

Andrew looked at Chariot's severed arm. Smoke curled from where it had been severed; rot had spread down to the wrist. It was too far gone to save, and so he simply lay his shirt over it to block it from sight. His hands were trembling. His heart wouldn't stop hammering in his chest. He took a seat.

Akko lay beside her wounded idol. She knew it was presumptive to put her hand in Chariot's hair, but Chariot didn't say anything otherwise. She was staring up at the ceiling, half-lidded, but breathing steadily. "All this time," Akko said.

Chariot tried to smile. "I didn't know if I should tell you. I... I don't know... if it was the right thing to do."

"I'm sure it was," Akko said. "You're the best witch that ever was. If I knew who you were from the start I'd have died of happiness on the first day of school." She wanted desperately to cuddle against her. She wanted to kiss her wounds and restore her to health, then ride behind her on Shiny Valley into glorious battle and rescue Diana from the clutches of the Taken King. There was so much she wanted to do, so much Chariot deserved, and so little time and so much work ahead.

"Atsuko, whatever happens," Chariot said, "I want you to know you were brave and noble, and you fought the good fight."

"Save it for when we get home," Akko said. "When we're all safe."

Chariot blinked tears from her eyes. "Of course."

A light shone on the Shiny Rod. Two, in fact. There were rules magic had to follow, paths it could not stray from, roots that stayed when they grew. Akko was upon the sixth word as surely as she was on the cusp of the fifth. But the artifact's power must be awoken in sequence, and so Chariot was left to suffer, as Akko suffered silently at her side, and in its silent way, the Shiny Rod suffered with both.

Croix watched the sad affair and, in the most disgusting thing that had transpired this evening, felt pity for Chariot. It wasn't enough she'd taken Nelson's puke for her. It wasn't enough that she'd had to save her from death from blood loss or shock. She had to look at that stupid, brainless ginger's gorgeous face streaked with tears, and feel something that wasn't satisfaction.

She just had to love her again, however briefly.

"Akko," Chariot said. "The power of the Shiny Rod..."

Akko held up the divine implement. Hope stirred in her heart. "It's a sign. We can do it. We can stop this. When you're feeling better, Chariot, we can..."

"What time is it...?" Finnelan said, softly.

"What the hell do you mean?" Croix said.

Finnelan raised her arm, pulling back her sleeve and revealing a watch, the hands at 7:18 pm. She pointed at the clock on the mantle. It read 9:48.

Perhaps somewhere Nelson was laughing.

"Fuck," Croix said.

* * *

The lake churned into a mighty whirlpool, the whirlpool parting into a vortex, revealing the secret nested in the lake: growing on the central column was a tree, or perhaps simply a bolus of roots and branches engulfing the column like a climbing ivy, a bulge at half the lake's depth betraying the existence of a platform.

Diana angled her broom down and flew toward the column, wind whipping her hair into a black-and-white nimbus behind her.

As she approached, the tree moved; growth burst across its trunk, lengths of burly hardwood root, sheets of spined bark, endless rosy vines bristling with thorns and beautiful, vivid crimson and pink flowers.

"You spurn me!" Diana said, raising her readied wand.

The spined bark flexed and a hail of spines hurtled towards her; the thorns cracked against her shield. She sent void energy into the sharp bark and blew it to splinters.

The roots grew, and grew, and swung at her with columnar limbs. She issued forth jets of solar energy, spurning them aside with raw force, burning them to delicate charcoal and ash before they could land hits. She sheathed herself in the storm and those she could not burn were struck by lightning and blown to pieces.

As she blasted the stronger limbs aside she didn't notice the rose vines creeping up their mightier cousins, and as she blew one limb apart a dozen rose vines encircled her spellcasting limb. "Ah... clever!" Diana said, firing off solar plasma into the vines, but there were more, and more-

Enrobed in vines, incapable of moving even as they were incapable of piercing her shields, Diana was drawn to the face of the great tree. The green light of witch-magic torrented down its facade, coalescing into a huge, humanlike form.

The tranquil face of Beatrix Cavendish looked down upon her. For the first time, she saw Beatrix's eyes open; for the first time, she saw her not smiling, but with her mouth open, tongue against the roof of her mouth, as though she were looking on a kicked dog. Pity. Diana seethed with hate of that look.

"Diana..." Beatrix said. "You are sick. Daughter of my daughters, what sickness has taken root in you?"

"The sickness of enlightenment," Diana said. "I have known the Sword Logic. You are the greatest shame of our family, dooming us to fawn at the feet of the sick and dying to prolong their erasure from reality."

"Diana, this poison was implanted in you by forces that cannot comprehend the magnificence of life. They have seized you at your moment of greatest despair, locked you in a sea of black tears, and sent this nightmare of you out to raven the fixed stars." Beatrix reached out to touch Diana's face; the silk of her skin against Diana's cheek scrawled white flame across her Taken hide. "The Deep seeks to drag you down. I cannot allow this. Diana Cavendish, may you be purged."

Diana bit her tongue and spat ichor through the spectral face of Beatrix. The roses wound around her spellcasting arm glowed, as if their color was light; the thorns bit into her shield, chewed through it, and planted into her skin, her arm, her hand, her wand. Diana screeched in pain.

"It will hurt," Beatrix said. "But it will heal."

Diana felt the stirrings of hope in her chest and bid them drown in blood. Screeching still, she strained against the roses as they climbed up her arm and chest; bleeding and with a pain that transcended Taken agony she tore her arm free of the vines and aimed her wand at Beatrix's face. The roses clung tight to the wand and her hand, infesting her Taken form with bitter healing light.

"Burn," she said, and solar flame struck the core of the tree.

The rose vines girding her flinched, drew away as she kept the jet of magic flame on the spot. "Diana," Beatrix's specter said, on the verge of tears, "when I was young and the stars were linked I heard the name Oryx. The name is ancient beyond meaning; you will find no joy in him, no release, no satisfaction. These are anathema to his kind. He will feed on your suffering until all that's left of you is consumed by his darkness, then feed you to his machine of war, and you will be gone beyond memory."

"And here you are nested in gentle ignorance," Diana said. "You threw your life away... threw so many Cavendish lives away... in pursuit of an ideal born dead. Oryx was ancient when you were young, and he thrives still. This is his power! This is what he made of me!" She ceased her assault of flame and with a cutting-spell freed herself from the tangle of vines burying into her body. The un-color of her Taken body purged them of their foul light. Her broom still underneath her feet, she glided towards the tree, blasting away over a millennia of growth with withering black magic.

She ceased when she felt her prize was near. The specter of Beatrix had long dissipated. Or, perhaps, not her specter so much as a projection.

The oldest and strongest of witches did not die physically; they grew into trees. Some perished in spirit, it was said, moving on to what lie beyond death; others, it was said, prolonged their life indefinitely, contemplating arcane truths liberated from concerns of life.

Beatrix Cavendish was such a coward. Ghost-pale, blind-eyed, her bald head cradled in smoldering wood, the first Cavendish faced the last.

"You..." Diana said, speaking to her wand, "have proven yourself as much a part of my arm as my hand. For your service to me, I, the Maw of Oryx, dub you Thorn, for you have drunk deep of pain and grown to embody it." She squeezed her wand and the brittle thorns dug deep into her skin. "Ah..."

She touched Beatrix's withered, sallow skin.

"Behold," Diana said. "The fruit of the tree of Cavendish."

* * *

I heard a small prayer from a small mind

Far way, a world aflame said:

Give me strength and I will give you strength

I am a giver of gifts; I am a kind king

I took a child, small and scared

And I have made her strong

You, whose prey runs from you in fear

Diana Cavendish, whose name means Divine Daughter from Where the Brave Raise their Cattle

You have made cattle of the mother of your mothers

Raised to heal the sick, reborn to feed on the weak

Not shepherd, but butcher and gourmand

Chew ancient wisdom with young teeth

How the joke pleases My Court!

The Maw of Oryx feasts

To make a path for my armies.

* * *

By the time Akko and her friends made it out of the mansion, it was too late.


	4. The Jagged Purpose of Angry Thorns

_Chapter 4:_ The Jagged Purpose of Angry Thorns

"No sun complains about its death. Life is the problem." - Dreams of Alpha Lupi

* * *

"What do you see, Maw of Oryx?"

"Every hospital, a feast. Every crib, a casket. I see one in ten men living long enough to be Taken. I see a still Earth. I see a queen at my side, soul dead, her eyes in my mouth, her heart in my heart. I see a beautiful final shape." She felt she should be crying for the beauty of the vision.

"You are a gallant soul, Maw of Oryx. May this slaughter be a feast to shame the gluttons of the Cabal. Aiat."

Diana raised her arms to the sky and prayed for death.

* * *

First, they ran.

Croix took the lead, Akko and Andrew propped up Chariot as she regained her strength, Finnelan brought up drag and huffed and puffed all the while. They stopped once for Finnelan to catch her breath and for everyone to arm up, raiding brooms and Croix a wand from a display on the wall.

"Shit, will you look at this?" Croix said, plucking a curved wand with a forked tip from its sconce. "This is an Iscariot-pattern war wand. The youngest one of these is older than the United States. Perfect for what we need it for. Andrew, where's your gun?"

"I didn't bring it," he said, with a momentary hesitation. "It fired empty. I don't-"

"Of course you did." She flicked the wand. "Come on, you dirty bitch, let me cast a spell-" Energy sparked between the forks of the wand. "Yes! We're back in business! Chariot, Finnelan, test your wands, I think Diana's curse wore off." She cast a spell and held out her hand.

"I've got power," Chariot said, a steady glow emanating from her wand.

"That was only... what, fifteen, twenty minutes subjective time?" Finnelan said. "Presuming the curse worked on subjective time."

"Lesson one, we stay the hell away from that spell," Croix said. "Akko, did you get a good look at it?"

"I did!" Akko said. "It looks like a starburst in her hand. Like a picture of a star, I mean, not like the candy."

Andrew's gun spun around the corner they'd come down and into Croix's empty hand. "Arma Infintito," she said, tapping the magazine, and the inner barrel glowed red-hot. She handed the gun back to Andrew, who took it with another long pause. "That'll keep you going all night long, you stud."

"Thank you," he said, faintly blushing. Akko giggled at him.

"We have the means, we have the method." Croix fetched a broom from the display. "Let's go bag us a witch."

* * *

The Earl of Hanbridge sat alone in the hotel bar. The bartender didn't object when he pulled out his cigar case; on the contrary, he slid a cheap plastic coaster with a deep depression in it his way, and watched him snip and light his smoke. Paul puffed on his cigar, the rich smoke filling his mouth, and wondered where his son had gone so wrong.

The local news had shown the witches filing out of the electronics store and flying off to save the day, his son among them; blessedly none of the newscasters had recognized his son, though surely those troglodytes that gathered online had singled him out and made him a laughingstock in an instant.

He would have to reprimand the boy and put an end to his foolish tolerance of witches. More and more they seemed impossible to escape, and the thought of a generation lost completely to the seduction of witchcraft was intolerable. Whatever he had to do, it had to be drastic, and it had to be lasting.

But he was exhausted, and his heart was heavy, and his mind haunted by thoughts of what those brazen bitches could be doing in that secluded mansion, playing murder sequestered far from the real world. What they could be doing to his son... it made him sick. To the fires with all of them.

Nested in the middle of the first floor of the hotel, the bar was well-insulated from the outside. They were late in learning that the end of the world had come to roost in Wedinburgh.

* * *

In her bedroom at Luna Nova, Headmistress Holbrooke's crystal ball sputtered to life on her desk. "-there?" someone said. "Oh thank Flagg this old piece-of-shit connected. Holbrooke, are you there?!"

"Ms. Meridies...?" Holbrooke said, looking up from her book. "Something has gone wrong?"

"Oh, you have no idea," Croix said. Her image was shaky, there were too many lights and darks, like one of those movies where the camera shakes around if it were filmed in black and white. "Diana, she's been cursed by the Taken King, some big-name horror from outer space. He got Nelson, too, she put some kind of time curse on us... either we don't have much time or it's already too late." She paused to cast another spell, contact flickering for a moment as she channeled her energies elsewhere. The image snapped back into place. "Get your asses down here, everyone you can spare, every sorcery unit you can pick up and take with you..." She fell silent. The image steadied; she could see, behind her, Chariot and Finnelan on brooms, Akko and young Andrew Hanbridge riding with them. They stared, mouths open, at something she couldn't see.

"Ms. Meridies?" Amanda said, cradling the crystal ball in her hands. "I'm still here. Your spell is holding. What are you..."

Croix held out her wand, steady as she could, until the perspective of her spell changed and Holbrooke saw exactly what they were seeing. Somewhere off to the side, Akko made a little sound.

It was more than Holbrooke could make. She placed the crystal ball back on its mount, took a breath, and ran to the far wall of her bedroom, towards the big red switch labeled IN CASE OF APOCALYPSE.

* * *

They broke free of the mansion out last. Croix, at the front of the pack, shoved a wave of force magic ahead of them, slamming open the doors and letting them fly into the frigid January night. Croix was speaking to the headmistress: "...every sorcery unit you can pick up and take with you..."

They banked around the house and saw what Diana had done.

A flame burned above the lake, above the sorcerer's stone. It burned a sick rotting-meat green, fed by salitter sublimating from the sorcerer's stone in a thick miasma. The eastern horizon, the direction of Wedinburgh, burned red and green. As they flew in a wide circle around the lake, something pushed out of the flame.

It was a ship carved from black stone, a flying tomb with sick green lights staring from its underbelly. It was enormous, several stories tall and nearly as long as a city block.

Croix ended her hail of Holbrooke. "Son of a bitch," she said.

"Too late it is," Chariot said, hopping onto her broom and startling the hell out of Akko. She cast a spell on the broom. "Akko, that should keep the broom in the air for a while. Steer like you mean it. Stop Diana however you can."

"Urs-Chariot, what are you-"

"Sybilladura Lelladybura. Remember it," Chariot said.

"Sybilladura... Lelladybura! I'll never forget it!" Akko said, grabbing on to the haft of the broom.

Chariot kneeled, then sprung from her broom, leaping at the ship as it glided free of the burning rupture. She spun in the air, her foot glowing bright: "Vega Varulus!" She swung her foot into the bough of the alien ship, knocking off a chunk of stone and nudging it off-course. She rebounded from the ship and Croix flew past her, snatching her out of the air.

"Goddamn you, woman!" Croix said. "You're gonna throw your life away already?!"

"Desperate times, Croix," Chariot said, grabbing Croix's broom with her ankles and swinging herself on. "Swing around, we're gonna pound that thing into the dirt!"

The ship spat out a ball of roiling plasma; it sailed through the air at a lesiurely pace, aiming at the two teachers on their broom.

"Murowa!" Finnelan shouted, pitching a blast spell at the plasma ball, the projectiles detonating each other. Andrew, for his part, held tight to his gun and fired it at the ship, squeezing the trigger as fast as his wrists would let him.

Akko grit her teeth and pointed her broom at the vortex in the lake. "Come on, Diana..." She tried to remember the finer points of steering the Shooting Star and kept the point trained on the tree growing into the column. Her wind whipped through the wind, and she realized only now that she had forgotten her hat with Andrew.

Well, she had better things to worry about, like that lightning storm brewing between her and Diana.

* * *

The sound of distant gunfire rose Paul from his reverie.

"Do you hear that?" he said, snuffing out his cigar.

"I did, sir," the bartender said. "Hotel policy is to advise guests to return to their rooms in case of an armed attack. What floor were you on, sir?"

"The third. I don't suppose-"

The sound of shattering glass and stone interrupted him. They heard screaming and an agonized sounding like that of some huge, wounded animal.

"Out the rear entrance it is," the bartender said, retrieving a hefty shotgun from behind the bar. "Please follow, and step lively."

* * *

Akko tried to steer through the net of lightning bolts surrounding the tree. The key word was "tried;" at full speed and not knowing the first word about slowing a broom down, she wound up charging directly into a bolt, electric pain coursing through her and affixing her to the broom. Wincing, spasming, she aimed the broom-which had caught fire, wow-at Diana, incapable of thinking about what the hell she'd do once she got to her, much less the tree behind her.

Diana held out her wand and pronounced a word. "Mauer."

The broom stopped in midair, so suddenly it threw Akko off and at Diana, tumbling over end. She held on tight to the Shiny Rod, to her wand, and on landing took the hit to her right shoulder and hip, oh boy did that smart. She rolled, tried to get onto her feet, kept her wand pointed at Diana. "Fusilo... Fusilo!" she said, pouring energy at her.

The spell burst against her shields, which held steady. "Atsuko," Diana said, who pointed her new wand at her. "Die." She fired off shots at Akko, who ran in a circle around her, pelting her with Fusilo spells until her shield burst. Diana didn't bother dodging. She was curious about Akko's plan.

"Arae Aryrha!" Akko shouted, whipping the Claiomh Solais at Diana, who simply apported overhead-where Akko aimed her wand. "Pyroshale!" Diana burst into flame, the silhouette of her Taken form like an outline cut from the heart of the fire. As she fell, Diana prepared one of her stars and flung it at Akko. Akko invoked the second Word, grabbed the axe's haft with both hands, and swung it like a bat at the star, sending it flying back at the Taken horror. Diana waved her thorned wand at the star and sent it rebounding right at Akko with a soft puff of force; as Akko whacked the star back at her again, Diana snapped her fingers.

The star detonated on the blade of the Claiomh Solais.

* * *

Paul and his attendant had picked up a good dozen friends on their way out the hotel, help and guests alike. The bartender with his gun took point, of course, Paul just behind him, interposing between a healthy young man and his terrified son who clutched a football close to his chest. The bartender unlocked the back door and shoved his way through, into the remarkably clean back alley between the hotel and its neighbor, a three-star restaurant.

"Please continue following me," the bartender said, stepping out and shouldering his gun, pointing it at the floor. He gestured, and the people began flooding out, headed towards the eastern exit of the alley. "This way. There is a police station four blocks-"

Something peered into the alley from the direction of the police station. It was nearly as tall as the restaurant next door; it was an ebony thing, almost human if clad in armor that seemed to be hewn from titanic bones. Its coloration was an eye-searing blue-white at its legs, which darkened to an ink-black at its crested, cyclopean head. A single blue eye glared down at the evacuees.

One of the help screamed.

"Change in plans!" the bartender said, pushing through the crowd and aiming his shotgun up at the creature's eye, firing once, the noise making Paul flinch. Paul flattened himself against the alley wall and watched, curious and horrified, as the other evacuees flooded past him.

The monster leaned back, as if preparing to spit, and indeed it did. Gouts of napalm spewed from its eye, showering the alley in flame.

The beast aimed low; the first burst of napalm splashed across the bartender. Swearing, in unimaginable pain, he walked forward through the flames and emptied his gun into the monster's head.

The rest of it splashed in the midst of the evacuees, some of whom had ran back into the hotel, others who had run for the exit, and too many having been seized by terror or shock or indecision and were washed in flame.

If he lived to be two hundred Paul would never forget what he saw in that alley. The shrieking. The crying. Good people on holiday drowned in napalm. The man who had kept pace just behind him loomed out of the crowd, clenched over his son, who was sobbing. The man was burning; napalm adhered to his head and back and where it kissed his skin it was already scorching, turning black.

"Go," the man said, and Paul, who hadn't noticed only catching a splash of flame across his jacket, shed the half of his shirt which was aflame, scooped up the boy, and ran, edging along the side of the wall before making a break for the exit, and oh, he looked behind him. He looked over his shoulder as he ran, flinging off the other half of his jacket, the boy crying for, reaching for his father.

He saw the father struggling to catch up, but his skull was already peering through his skin, a wet gray color that grew brittle and black and cracked as Paul watched. The people who had caught fire were already dead, consumed by impossible flames spewed by the monster at the front of the alley, which had adjusted its position just so.

It was carrying a gun, wreathed in shadow, its barrel glowing bright, and it was aiming at him.

He reached the end of the alley and turned and ran, unsure where he was traveling, only aware that something exploded behind him and showered him with debris and for a moment his hearing was replaced by a sharp _eeee._

That was a bother. But it would fade. The boy was still crying, he could feel. The boy needed to be safe.

* * *

The underbelly of the tombship pulsed with a gray, burning light that seemed to be scanning the area. It didn't hurt, and it wasn't even all that dazing. The only weapons it seemed to have were the plasma orb launchers on either of its sides; with Chariot working on pounding a weak point into the craft, and Finnelan and Croix shooting down the weapons, it was smooth sailing, inasmuch as shooting at exploding globs of flame could be smooth. Andrew stopped trying to shoot, and instead helped spot for the witches.

"Miss!" Andrew shouted, pointing his gun. "Something came out of the ship!" Finnelan squinted at the patch of dark earth he pointed his gun at.

No, not something on the ground, but in the air-it flit by so fast she couldn't see it very well, but there was a flutter of cloth, perhaps, something definitely not in the air beforehand. "Illuma!" Finnelan said, flinging a lazily-floating ball of illumination towards the tombship.

There were two things flying under the ship. They looked somewhat like the Thralls-eyelss, dome-headed, plated with bone-but their bodies were cloaked in leathery armor and lengths of frayed cloth like capes or long gowns. They shrieked in ear-piercing harmony and the light spell snuffed out, returning them to darkness.

"We have fliers out!" Finnelan shouted. "Careful!" She fell back on one of her favorite spells from childhood: "Taflegryn Hud!" Streaks of white light burst from her wand and towards the flying things as they huddled in the shadows around the tombship. A handful struck one of those energy shields that these creatures seemed to enjoy. "Found one! I've got-"

"Up! Fly up!" Andrew shouted. Finnelan looked ahead and saw a dense cloud had appeared in her flight path-she gasped and pulled up, just barley managing to keep her head above the miasma. Her exposed skin stung as if her hands were asleep, and her clothes felt smeared with oil.

"What is that...?" Finnelan said, before she heard Andrew hacking up his lungs behind her. "Mr. Hanbridge, are you alright?"

"No," Andrew said. Finnelan glanced behind her and saw that his mouth and nose were stained a bruised color. Shit, he must've gotten a taste of-whatever that shit was.

"Hold the line!" Finnelan shouted, steering from the fight. "I need to heal Andrew!"

Croix steered between clouds of poison as they burst into being around the ship. "Think that shit'll burn?" she said, steering high and above the ship and building a charge on her Iscariot wand.

"I hope it blows up," Chariot said, clenching Croix's broomstick between her thighs and aiming her own wand.

"Elstrarajo!" pronounced Croix, spewing liquid flame at the poison; "Diphulaniado!" said Chariot, setting off the explosive spell in the midst of the cloud. The spells combined had a disgustingly beautiful effect, the green burst of power from Diphulaniado sending the napalm of Elstrarajo spewing in all directions, dispersing the poison and showering the tombship in flames. The resultant light stole the element of stealth from the Hive poisoners, whose shields had vanished as they absorbed the spells' punishment. The monsters flew away from each other in whirling spirals, their long cloaks trailing behind them, spraying attack spells behind them as they fled.

"We got this," Croix said, steering herself and Chariot through the field of fire. "They can't handle two of us, once Finnelan gets back we're stomping them to the ground!"

"Too risky. We've got to tuck this one in right now. Croix, bear with me on this shot," Chariot said, aiming her wand at the hole she'd kicked in the tombship. Multiple strikes with her kick-buffing spell had pecked a good-sized fissure in the ship's hull. "This one has a lot of recoil."

"You madwoman," Croix said, pointing the broom away from the ship and pressing her back to Chariot, hooking her arm under her stump. Let me be your recoil pad, she thought, and I won't forget to put roses on your grave.

* * *

Akko braced herself against the tree, the Shiny Rod in hand, thankfully still in its axe form. "Damn," she said. "Didn't see that coming." She was still alive, which was a start, and Diana was just... waiting. Standing there, staring at her with that one glowing eye. "I thought you wanted to kill me," Akko said. "Don't get me wrong, but..."

"In a way, I don't. My offer still stands," Diana said, holding out her hand. "I can't hold your failure against you. When you fought me off, I was still new, weak, malleable. You could have ended me then, if you hadn't fled like a coward. But now the power of the house of Cavendish is all mine now, and all of you together couldn't hope to stop me."

"So what's all that Sword Logic about?" Akko said, hefting the axe and wishing it were lighter when she was without magic. "If we can't win, that means we have to be wiped out, right?"

"Your true potential has yet to be reached," Diana said. "Your new shape awaits."

"Is that really it?" Akko said. She leveled the axe head against her. "Or is something else keeping you from finishing me off?"

Diana didn't respond, not immediately.

"There is, isn't it? You're still in there, Diana. You have to be. Whatever the Taken King did to you, he couldn't wipe you out, not all the way. You're still in there, and you want to keep me alive..." The thought crossed her mind and it was so beautiful and brilliant, like a perfect summer day, that it was almost impossible to believe in at this sunless hour, on the cusp of the end of all things. "You love me too much to kill me."

"Love. You," Diana said, her voice hollow.

"Is anything else strong enough to fight off magic like this? I don't think so."

"Love... spoken like a true child. What do you know of love?" Diana said. Far away, she felt her heart beat faster.

"Diana..." Akko said. She lowered the axe. "I... you've been there for me when even I couldn't belive in myself. You've helped me become a better person. You've saved my life, you've saved the school. You're brilliant, you're powerful... you're beautiful." Was she crying? Yes, she was crying. "You left Luna Nova to save your family. You left all your friends, you left all the promise the school had for you... you left me. Because you knew you could set things right.

"And maybe you can't right now... maybe you feel like you've done something you can't ever be forgiven for. But it's not too late. You can stop this, I know you can. Turn on the Taken King and send those monsters back and use the power of Cavendish the way it was meant to be. I may still be a kid... but I know that's love."

Diana laughed. "It's true," she said. "I love you, Atsuko Kagari. The way you pant at my heels. The way you start to listen once you've been kicked. The way you come mewling to me about love when I have you pinned in place like a bug fresh out of the killing jar..." She walked towards Akko, her shield stitching itself back together. "I would have you Taken for all the potential you never could learn to exploit for yourself. To have you at my side like the dog you were born to be. To taste your lips, raw and red, and your eyes, that the last thing your earthly mind perceives is the shape of my teeth as they press into your pupil."

"Go ahead," Akko say, "say all the awful things you want. If you were so powerful, you'd get it over with or do whatever it is you did to-"

The sound interrupted them both.

* * *

Wedinburgh was infested.

Paul stuck to the shadows, scurrying through the dark like a cockroach, the boy in hand. The boy he carried was sobbing uncontrollably, and why shouldn't he?

Four stone ships hung in the air above Wedinburgh. Periodically they spewed out rotting green stars that lazily drifted through the air, settled into a building, and obliterated it in a plume of flame. Inhuman beasts prowled the streets, tall as a man but clad in armor, worn or grown, of cracked bone and fabric dyed with bile and blood.

There were blind ones, scrambling low to the ground on twos or fours; lesser ones, with three eyes glowing like the backs of click beetles, prowling the streets and breaching buildings, dragging out victims in hiding. There were the armored ones, some three meters tall, hauling cannons or swords carved from single pieces of massive bone and infused somehow with a blackly glistening metal.

And there were the flying ones. Eyeless, yattering, shrieking, cackling. Conjuring poison from mid-air, over police, over fleeing civilians. Spraying what could only be magic onto people running or bearing riot shields or ducking hopelessly for cover.

And there were the other things. Like the fire-breathing giant they were darker than the night sky at their heads and changing in color to the awful un-blue at their extremities. He saw things like human-sized, horned wind-up dolls perched on rooftops, scouring away life with streaks of what seemed to be laser fire. He saw wiry, six-limbed things scuttling alongside the lesser aliens, projecting domes of shadow that stopped all gunfire cold.

He saw a riot cop, his skin smudged with a foul blackness, a blue, cyclopean eye burning open between his eyes, taking point before a low-flying cackler. A vortex of energy shone on his cracked, bone-skinned shield.

He saw men fighting and dying. Some of the weaker aliens perished to their gunfire, the blind ones and the lessers, but the few grenades they had to bear could, maybe, slow down the armored ones, if they didn't simply conjure a darkly-flaming shield that absorbed their explosions without a sound. There were battle lines, there were armored vehicles crashed into the armored ones, there were explosions in the distance of human make.

There were witches. God bless them, witches, on the street, hurling spells at the flying ones; those actually wore down the protective energies that kept bullets from striking them. Hiding behind a crashed ambulance, he saw a pair of witches lash a flier to a building with magic vines before pummeling its magic defenses with spells of their own. So vulnerable, a man with a rifle took several shots at it and by Christ the thing died, crumbling to ash that crumbled to nothing before it hit the ground.

The witches high-fived, the cop reloaded his gun with a triumphant smile.

An ogre tromped onto the street. There was no other word for it. It was titanic, tall as most of the old buildings of Wedinburgh, hunch-backed and with a head like a blunt mass of tumors with a mouth. Lights pulsed and seethed under the skin of its face. The witches crossed wands and prepared a spell; the ogre issued a dying sound, like whatever had crashed through the lobby of Paul's hotel, and a column of black magic spewed forth from its eyeless face.

The witches, the cop, they were blasted to ashes in an instant.

The boy stopped screaming and pleading a while ago. He had, however, never stopped crying.

In silence, Paul fled into a shattered storefront, cursing the glass that cracked under his shoes, and fled for a dark corner. The aliens may not think to destroy something already raided.

Paul had never felt less powerful in his life. It had been far too long since he had felt a burden like this, entrusted with a dead man's child in what had to be an invasion, be it alien or demon or some other damnfool thing. And yet his heart beat steady. His thoughts were sharp and clear.

Bitterly, he realized his grandfather was right. There is nothing more ruthless than compassion.

* * *

"Belga _Veeda!_ " Chariot said, and the force of the spell shoved her into Croix's back, the massive column of blue-green light streaking forth into the hole she'd kicked into the tombship. Its life-colored light suffused throughout the ship, tearing cracks and holes across its breadth, and at last erupting into a fountain of power, obliterating the tombship from the inside out. Croix kicked the broom into gear as the ship perished, getting them out of the way of the debris it blasted into the air.

"Hot damn!" Croix said. "Alien sonsabitches gonna regret-"

She flew into one of the bolts fired off by the Hive magician, the energies splashing against her chest. Her lungs froze, her heart stopped beating; for a long moment she felt like living death, her brain waiting to catch up to the rest of her body. She forced herself to steer down, trying to breathe, trying to feel warm blood pump into her body. Chariot was shouting... something. What was she saying...?

Was she flying? Her broom had glided to a stop. What was the spell to move again? What... what was Chariot shouting...?

She felt warmth in her chest and took a deep, terrified breath as clouds of poison bloomed around them.

* * *

Finnelan heard the explosion, heard Croix's shouting cut short, but was too busy purging the toxic mass from Andrew's body to do much more. He was only human, even if he was a healthy one, and she could barely keep pace with purging the alien toxins before they could do irreparable damage to his system.

"Please, boy, don't die on me," she muttered, "your awful father hates witches enough."

"Gun..." Andrew said. "Do I have the gun...?"

She glanced at his hands. "Yes. And you're pointing it at me."

"Sorry," Andrew said, trying to point the gun somewhere else. "I can't..."

"It's alright," Finnelan said, just as she felt the presence of something behind her. She saw bony claws in her periphery, and before she could do anything but think of what spell to turn on the foul beast a plume of toxins overwhelmed her senses, sticking to her eyes and filling her nose and throat. She held on tight to Andrew, coughing and hacking, and commanded her broom to flee. She sprayed the gathered toxins in Andrew's system behind her, and she heard Andrew spraying rounds at the monster.

"M'am-you have to-" Andrew said, and the second wizard was on them, its cape wrapping around their necks and hoisting them both free of Finnelan's broom.

Cackling, communing in the choking-on-glass alien language of the Hive, the wizards readied their tribute to the Maw of Oryx.

* * *

There was a basement, praise be to the Lord, and Paul sat there in the dark with the child in his arms, patting his back.

"I'm sorry you had to go through this," he said. "My son is out there, somewhere. I hope he's safe."

"Papa," the boy said. "I wan' see my papa."

Paul found that in this late hour he had no tongue for a lie. "Your father is a brave man," Paul said. "I'm sorry he can't be here with us. There has to be someone coming. The army will be here soon. More witches. They can fight the monsters together. They can win. We won't let them get away with this. We'll be safe, and the monsters will regret ever having hurt us. I promise you."

Something stirred in the darkness.

"Man, what a shitty promise that is."

He saw a single glowing eye, blue and bright. Recognition stirred in what he could make of the rest of her form, the sound of her voice.

"You're a teacher," Paul said. "At Luna Nova. You were one of the witches with my boy..."

"Heh. Yeah. Little fucker put a bullet in my eye. Can you believe it?" She gestured. In the darkness, only the un-light shading her limbs was visible. It illuminated nothing save her own form; whatever it was, that glow, that aura, it was not light, not true light. "Him and all those other goody-goodies that were too good to join the winning team."

Paul stood up. The witch was between himself and the way out. But there had to be a way out. There had to be.

Keep her talking. That was the least he could do.

"'Winning team.' What winning team?"

"Oryx, man. The Taken King. Older than anything alive on Earth. I was dead, or almost, and he gave me a second chance. Made me Taken! Made me stronger'n I ever was before. It's fuckin' great." She sighed. "I mean... the seizures kinda suck. Tried to down some gin, puked up everything I drank. So that sucks too." She twitched violently, her head flinging back, her hips bucking, her fingers splaying like a spider's legs. "Oooh, boy, there we go-"

He ran. He bolted for the staircase in the darkness, he heard the scissor-like snap of the aliens' guns and he no longer had legs from the knees down. He fell, he tried to lift he boy up as he did, and the boy was crying again as he struck his head on the ground and he had failed, goddammit, no, he had failed.

Tears flowed. His heart beat heavily in his chest. "You monster," he said, his voice choked. "You daughter of Satan."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a witch."

"I've seen witches die to stop your kind today. You wish you were still one of them..." He whispered in the boy's ear. "Run. Run, don't stop..."

The boy struggled to his feet, and the former witch killed him. Three pulses of energy through his side and he fell. He was not dead, not outright. He was dying.

The sounds of that boy dying became his world. It was the sound of the world dying.

The once-witch blew on the barrel of her gun like a Wild West gunslinger. "Well, now that that's out of the way... you and me..." She stepped over to the crippled Earl and leaned down. She reached under his chest and flipped him onto his side, then nudged him onto his back. "I think we're gonna enjoy a little time alone."

* * *

"We're winning," Akko said, advancing towards Diana. "You hear that? You can't stop us, you can only slow us down." She tried to force the magic back into her body. Come on, let's rock and roll...

Diana clucked her tongue. "One tombship is hardly a loss. I called up four others before you even arrived."

Akko's blood ran cold. "We took out one. We can take out the rest. Hell, they might be getting taken out as we speak."

"Perhaps," Diana said. "If a small town's guns can possibly pierce the armor of a Tombship. Much less the hide of an Ogre, the armor of a Knight, the shields of a Wizard..."

Akko charged Diana, hefting the axe over her head. "Phaidoari Afairynghor!" she shrieked, huffing as she forced its weight down and onto Diana, who caught the blade on her forearm, the blade bouncing off her shield as if she'd struck her with a mundane weapon. "Aw, come on!" She wound up for another swing and Diana stepped aside; as she passed, she stroked Akko's cheek with her wand, drawing deep gouges with its bitter barbs.

Grunting, panting, Akko kept striking, barely able to hit her and each hit doing nothing. She tried to force Diana towards the tree, or off the edge of the platform, or to the middle where her pals could more easily attack her from the air, but it was Diana in control of the dance, leading her in circles and forcing her to retreat until Akko's back pressed against the tree, the smooth-blasted bark stained with tacky, drying blood.

"Ah..." Diana said. "Do you feel that?" She put a hand to her ear in mock fascination.

"Not listening to Evil Diana!" Akko said, lunging and swinging the axe at Diana's legs. She leaped into the air, backflipped, and landed a few yards away. "Aw, come on!"

"Potential," Diana said. "You have a weakness... a weakness Oryx can take away from you."

"Screw him!" Akko said, spitting on the ground. "I'm not perfect but I'm no puppet on an evil string, either! So tell him to... to..."

She saw the approach of the Hive Wizards, floating tranquilly through the air, carrying their prey between them, strung up and tied together with their capes. Finnelan, Andrew, Croix, Chariot-all dangling limp, struggling to breathe, their mouths, noses, and eyes discolored.

"I don't see how we can recover from such a defeat," Diana said. "Truly you have us at your mercy."

"No," Akko said, scarcely a whisper.

"Akko," Chariot said, "it's not too late. Do what you have to. We'll make it through, I promi..." She lapsed into a coughing fit, which became a wheezing fit.

"You'd better get this right, kid," Croix said. "Because you've given me a really fucking terrible day!"

"Akko!" Andrew said, his voice frail. "You can do this! Stop Diana, or..."

Diana gestured. "Throw him down."

The wizards made a sign and Andrew was unwound from their capes. He fell through the air; Akko ran for him, refusing to let go of the Shiny Rod, but she was too far, and the rod too heavy, and he landed on his leg with a wet snap. He crumpled to the ground, half-kneeling, one of his shins broken and bending at a grotesque angle. His gun clattered to the ground. And Diana was upon him.

"Andrew..." Diana said. Akko, shrieking, flung herself at Diana, swinging the axe, and Diana rebuked her with a burst of force, knocking her back. "I remember you. Alone of all the boys I'd met, you never once mocked me for spending my days in study of magic... hoping against hope that my powers would manifest in time."

"Diana, you-" Andrew said. He saw Akko charging, axe held low, body steering towards Diana but her gaze fixed on his. She had such warm eyes. So hopeful. In that moment he saw the passion burning in her heart, the passion that drove her far past her limits. She would be on Diana in moments, and with all the fury she could muster, she would-

"I owe you nothing," Diana said, firing a bolt of magic through his throat.

Andrew's neck burst open in a spray of red. Gurgling, hands clenched futilely over the wound, struggling to remain upright, he lost his strength, fumbled into a pool of his own blood, and died. Akko skidded to a stop.

"The power of love," Diana said. "You must not have loved him very much, or you could've stopped that."

Akko stared at Andrew. Words escaped her. Feeling escaped her. Hope escaped her. All that remained was a numb self-loathing: look at what you did, you stupid bitch. You couldn't even save one of your best friends. The weight of the Shiny Rod was too much. A day without water or food or anything but the most brief distraction from a constant parade of horrors weighed on her; she slumped to the ground, leaning on the Shiny Rod to keep from falling over. That was all it was good for. In her hands, that's all it deserved to be. That's all it ever was.

A presence descended upon them. Akko felt it like the weight of three green-burning eyes boring into her skin. Finnelan, still half-blind, perceived a sensation of profound vertigo, the memory of a broom-riding accident she had when she was learning to fly. Chariot felt the noxious twist of her stomach she felt the night she learned what the Dream Fuel Spirits really did. Croix felt a faint, chill companionship, like a corpse's hand on her shoulder.

"Akko-" Chariot said, but a tether of darkness insinuated itself into her back. Another struck Croix, burrowing where the wizard's spell had wounded her; Finnelan, realizing what happened, closed her eyes, and tried to anticipate that when a tether attached itself to her, it would hurt like nothing else. She was right, but anticipation didn't help mitigate the pain.

"Surrender to despair," Diana said, "and be reborn."

The weight of intent returned to Akko's hand. The burden of the Shiny Rod was lessened. Its fifth gemstone alit.

Believe, she thought. Please, for everyone, try to believe.

A tether dug itself into Akko's chest. She hefted the Shiny Rod and shouted "Sybilladura Lella-"

The darkness yawned wide and Akko fell into it.

* * *

You are Atsuko Kagari. The shame of Luna Nova Academy. A nothing daughter of a nothing family, chasing an impossible dream. Against all odds, the inheritor of the Claiomh Solais.

You have been taken.


	5. Real Things in the Darkness

_Chapter 5:_ Real Things in the Darkness

"Aiat: let me be what I am because to be anything else would be fatal." - the Books of Sorrow, verse 5:6

* * *

Atsuko Kagari fell forever.

In this place was alone, and she was surrounded. Thousands, millions, billions, a numberless infinity, were suspended around her in an emptiness that defied the word "void," a lightlessness that defied the word "darkness." They were too far away to see, they were specks like lightless stars in the night. They were close enough she heard them sobbing in their sleep, moaning, praying, to gods or family or the Taken King. She was close enough to hear them stare into the emptiness.

In her hand the Shiny Rod glowed, five stars in defiance of the endless night. The Word had not died in her throat or drowned in the transition from one world to the next. It had been dragged into the endless night with Akko, but she realized now that it was not a blind plummet into the emptiness. The voice that invited her to this place boomed in her ears. Her fall slowed; she leveled herself off, no longer staring at a nonexistant ground, but ahead of her. As her vision resolved, her brain aching as it tried to make sense of impossible stimuli, she saw her.

Diana. Diana was here.

She hung suspended in the nothingness, her gorgeous curls floating in a nimbus around her head. Her eyes were closed. The scar of a gunshot wound was embossed on her head, over her eye, where Nelson had shot her, and over her shoulder where Akko had chopped her arm off, her uniform and cloak frayed, pink scar tissue knitting the wound together. Periodically, she spasmed, as the Taken shape of her did.

The Taken shape... that wasn't Diana.

This was the real Diana. The Taken was her nightmare.

She fell through the endlessness and into Diana's arms.

* * *

Let out your held breath. Dry your tears. Let go of the Claiomh Solais; it will not save you here.

What hope brought you here? What dream has left you alone in the long dark?

* * *

"Shut up, Evil Voice," Akko said. She touched Diana's face. "Diana, wake up. Diana, I'm here. Wake up, Diana, please..."

"I'm dead," Diana said, her voice quiet and slurring. "I was born dead. I was in hell. Please, just let me hurt."

"Diana friggin' Cavendish!" Akko seized her shoulders and shook her. "You're the most brave and powerful and wonderful person I know and you can't let some big, evil monster make you be anything else!"

* * *

It was beauty that brought you here. Shiny Chariot, miracle of the stage, brightest witch in all the world. You were entranced by her power, but you were seduced by her beauty. All your life, you've wanted to be powerful enough to be beautiful. You struggled to live the life of a white-clad heroine of the magic arts.

* * *

"Diana, the voice, he's starting to run his mouth..." She grit her teeth. "Diana, you studied the Words of Arcturus, right?"

"Akko, why are you even trying? It's done. The Earth is dying. Nothing Taken has ever been returned." Her eyes were still closed. Her voice was faltering. "Her hands are my hands. Her thoughts are mine. What I've done can never be forgiven. And I don't want you to forgive me." She sobbed. "Not when all I can think about is how your eyes would taste..."

Akko squeezed Diana, grasping the Rod in both hands behind her back. "It's not your fault. You didn't know what was waiting for you when you got home. You didn't know what would happen, you didn't know about the monsters tricking people you trusted. You were forced into doing all of this. None of it was your fault... and when we get you out of here, you can help undo what Oryx forced you to make happen."

"How?"

Akko lifted the Shiny Rod. The fifth gemstone shone in the darkness, more true and real than anything else. "You weren't listening very hard, were you?"

* * *

Even now, your love and lust drives you like a goad. Always to someone that hurts you.

Sucy Manbavaran, who takes casual delight in your pain. Andrew Hanbridge, who tolerates your eccentricities in the vain hope of owning your body. Croix Meriedes, the architect of your life's misfortune. And Chariot du Nord, the author of your every misery.

You fawn and worship at the feet of the woman who devoured your potential for magic to make her fireworks shows a little more colorful.

* * *

"Akko...?" Diana said.

"That voice... do you hear it?" Akko said, looking around. She heard it, yes, but more than that, she felt it, like her bones had been turned to speakers.

"The voice of Oryx," she says. "It's going to hurt."

"I'd like to see him try," Akko said, brandishing the Shiny Rod. "You'll never own my heart. You'll never make me one of you. Make your big speeches all you want, I'll just have to-"

* * *

You have made a mistake, Atsuko Kagari.

This is not a discussion.

This is a declaration.

* * *

Agony flared in Akko's head, like someone had lit a candle in her brain. "Aaaaagh!" She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. "The Words... you studied them! Sedy... no... Sybill... Sybilladura..."

"Sybilladura Lelladybura."

"What does it... what do they mean?" She buried her head in Diana's neck.

"It's my family motto. The word of Lady Beatrix. 'An old tradition and a new power will open the door to the unseen world.'"

"'Unseen world...'" Akko fixated on the word and its meaning.

She tried, bless her idiot's heart.

* * *

Your dream was inspired by the woman who made your dreams impossible. Your love is for those greater than you could ever be. Your endevaors are doomed to failure, victory perpetually beyond your grasp, wisdom perpetually beyond your understanding. You will run yourself down this path until you wear yourself out and fade into nothingness, forgotten as you always knew you would be.

You do not need to be forgotten.

* * *

"Diana!" Akko shrieked. "Are we home?!"

"No," Diana said. Slowly, something like consciousness was returning to her. The world she saw through her Taken self's eyes was growing insubstantial. Her desire to eat Akko alive was less an instinctive lust so powerful she couldn't lay eyes on her without salivating and more a nagging, intrusive thought, inconvenient but ignorable. "We're not home."

"So it's... aagh... it's unseen, right?"

Diana's heart beat. It was beating again. She felt warmth for the first time in a day.

"It is."

'Diana, what are the words?"

"Sybilladura Lelladybura!" Diana said.

"Sybilladura-"

* * *

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [your soul is mine].

* * *

Akko bolted upright, relative to Diana's static pose. She was shaking. No... she was seizing. Inky filth coalesced on her clothes, her skin.

"Akko...? Akko!" Diana lifted her right arm. She tried to lift her arm. Lifting it felt like breaking it, like the darkness had tethered it in place, and she could no more heft it than she could move the earth. "Akko, listen to me! Sybilladura Lelladybura! Say the words! The Claiomh Solais chose you for a reason!"

She lifted her left, and with some effort it glided, slowly, out of position. She glanced at it and saw that it was wreathed in a flowering rose vine, her wand wreathed in crimson blooms and soft thorns.

Beatrix Cavendish's final healing spell had not gone to waste.

* * *

Take the knife. Make yourself beautiful. Take your new shape.

* * *

I said take it.

* * *

This is not an option. Take the kni

* * *

" _Ennor Fiendennor!_ "

In the endless dark, the column of green light was a supernova.

Akko breathed, she thought, and she banished all those awful, evil thoughts from her mind, and she took the knife by the handle and flung it into the emptiness where it belonged. Metaphorically. Not that she understood it to be metaphorical at the time, but like many things, symbolism was not one of Akko's strong points.

It got the point across, though, and if the Taken King was watching, he could only watch Akko raise the Shiny Rod over her head and pronounce with faith and furvor the word " _Sybilladura Lelladybula_!"

If the curse-breaking spell was a supernova, the transformation of the Shiny Rod was the birth of a new universe. At the heart of this new universe was something Diana and Akko recognized at once.

"The Shiny Valley," Diana said, in awe.

"Chariot's own broom," Akko said, and she laughed uncontrollably. "Oh baby, I'd hate to see Oryx try to catch us when we're on this!" She looked down at Diana and held out the broom to her. "Would you do us the honors?"

Diana stared at the broom. "Akko, where would we even-"

Akko took her right hand and placed it, without effort, without the pain of being bound, onto Shiny Valley. Its light flowed into her. "It brought me here to you," Akko said. "It'll bring us back out. Trust me."

"I trust you," Diana said.

* * *

This is not done.

* * *

"Yeah?" Akko said, looking behind her into the limitless dark. She rode passenger on Shiny Valley, Diana re-learning how to ride a broom with her own body. "Witches make their own fate. Take this knife, it's shaped like _fuck you._ "

She flipped the darkness the bird as she saw Oryx loom from out of the infinite expanse. In this place, he was more infinite yet, his three burning eyes piercing Akko with feeling, the feeling of utter, unfiltered, absolute irritation. The casual irritation of a god this old and this strong was like a brand in her eye. A talon that could crush galaxies in its palm reached for her. For them.

"Tia frayre!" Diana shouted.

Shiny Valley raced, as the saying goes, to beat the devil.

* * *

The darkness yawned wide and Akko fell into it.

A heartbeat later, the darkness burst in a spray of gold and green and Diana and Akko raced free of it, the Shiny Valley executing a hairpin turn and stopping before they'd even hit the edge of the platform, Diana's blonde and Akko's milk-white hair bright flags billowing in the air. Diana raised a rose-wreathed arm, a rose-wreathed hand clenching a rose-wreathed wand, and aimed it at her Taken self. Akko held frozen in place, eyes wide, mouth agape, middle finger proudly extended.

"Akko?" Chariot said.

"Diana?!" Croix said.

"Son of a bitch," Finnelan said, in awe.

In their hearts, despair caught flame and burned to nothing. The tethers of darkness snapped and the consuming haze receded. The Hive wizards sounded their disbelief.

Taken Diana stood agape. "No," she said, the sound lost to Diana's spell. Taken Diana braced for the Murowa strike, the energies denting but not dispelling her energy shield.

"Monster," Diana said, her hand trembling, her knuckles ghost-white, "you have stolen my family's honor and power and forced me to perform the most vile blasphemies. I will have them back and more for what you've made me done." Behind her, Akko desperately tried to arrange her thoughts into something coherent; in the wizards' net, the trapped witches forced their poison-kissed bodies into motion, Chariot successfully breaking her arm free from the webbing.

"Shadow of my former self," Taken Diana said, "it pleases me that I shall taste your fool heart." She waved her wand and conjured the thunderstorm on top of the trapped witches as Chariot and Diana each cast a spell.

Magic barriers engulfed the trapped witches, the lightning striking the shells, seething across their surfaces, and their occupants staying safe. The wizards responded by dropping their captives.

Diana, with a soft sound of exertion, spun the Shiny Valley around and hurtled its cap straight through the netting, catching her falling teachers and streaking into the night sky. And dragging all three of them behind her and Akko like cans tied to a car's bumper, the barriers clattering against each other as the sackcloth net fluttered behind the Valley.

"Ow," Finnelan said.

"May you please slow down-" Chariot said, Diana doing just that before she could finish. "Thank you. Maybe a little help getting us free before-" Below, the Hive wizards shrieked their disdain and combined their energies to construct a mighty spell. "Before whatever they're doing kicks in!"

"Akko, a little help?" Diana said.

"-hbuh? Help? Right! Help! Right, gotta do help now!" Akko said, feeling for her wand. "Right, uh... Lalaga!" She stuck her wand into the Hive cloth, which rapidly frayed into nothing. Not an ideal situation for the witches presently without brooms. "Wait, wait!" Akko said, realized what she was saying, and instead hopped off the broom. "Metamorphie-"

The Hive wizards sang a nerve-severing note and conjured a roiling mass of razor-edged tendrils. Tentacles burst free from the mass, their edges singing in the chill midnight air, and towards the falling witches, until they were caught by a wing-eared, near-orb-shaped, orange-candy-colored flying elephant. The colorful creature had difficulty banking, but with a little kicking and a boost from a propulsion spell cast by Finnelan, it managed to evade the shredding grasp of the wizards' spell.

"Cutting it a little close, are we?!" Finnelan said, aiming the force jet to help Akko bank just a little tighter.

"Good one!" Croix said.

"Good wha-" She heard the whistle of the bladed tentacles ripping through the air and put two and two together. "Mother Mormo, Croix, how could you think of that at a time like this?"

"We're being rescued by Flying Elephant Akko, lighten the hell up!" Croix said, taking aim at the wizards as Akko flew in a wide circle around them.

Meanwhile, Diana piloted the Shiny Valley around her home, taking a moment to thread the Valley through the Thrall waiting for Taken Diana's orders, the horrors bursting apart when speared with the holy weapon. The broom was fast, astonishingly so, and the Thralls had no hope of escaping her attack. After snipping that dangling threa,d she doubled back and rejoined Akko in time to help flank the wizards.

"Hold on tight, this might get rough!" Akko said, tilting in flight so that Croix had the clearest shot. The Hive wizards locked fingers and chanted, assembling a noxious cloud in the air above them, enrobing it with an interlocking shell of bone. The shell pried open and sprayed the customary torrent of black magic, the shots concealing a slower-moving explosive charge amidst the rain of spells.

Diana traced her way between shots as if she were drawing a path through a maze, cursing the explosives into early detonation and casting an unweaving spell that bit into the alien construct and started ripping apart its constituent energies.

Even with Finnelan offering a boost and some guidance (mostly in the form of invectives) and Chariot counterspelling projectiles out of the sky, her size made perfect dodging impossible and several shots clipped her legs, sides, and wings, staining her colorful hide shades of bruise. "Hurry u-u-u-up!" she said at Croix.

Croix didn't respond; she had to make sure this shot took, aligning the tines of her war-wand with the core of the Hive device. "Three... two... one... _Gungnir Puso!_ " Streams of magic converged between the tines and a red streak of light burst from her wand and struck the heart of the Hive spell. Diana's unweaving-spell met its energies and directed them to the weak points in the spell's construction. The shrieking bolt-thrower exploded, showering the Hive wizards with debris and spent spells.

"Let 'em have it!" Akko said, flying straight at the wizards. With four witches pounding them with an array of destructive spells at once, the wizards crumbled under the assault and died screaming, their bodies collapsing to ash and scattering on the night wind, Akko inadvertently flying straight through and getting a trunkful of ash, sneezing and coughing and coming in for a rough landing on the lawn.

Akko poofed back to her human form in a tangle of bodies. "Are we all okay?" she said.

"More or less," Finnelan said, prying herself from under Akko and Croix.

Croix held up her wand and summoned their brooms, which darted from where the wizards had let them fall. "That's two down, plus the zombies... let's not waste time, Diana might call up another one of those flying sepulchers and we're back to square one."

Chariot wordlessly pointed up to the night sky.

A sickly-green star had appeared between the sky and the moon, concealing the star-shaped scar on the lunar surface.

Diana hovered near her allies over the churning waters of the lake. "She has something far worse than a tombship in mind," she said. "She's going to summon a Hive w... a Hive wa..." Smears of light filled her vision. Her head felt light, her body swooning. Was a blight shard about to break over th-

Her back lurched out of place, her arms and legs twisting and flexing. "hggk" she said, falling from the Shiny Valley. Akko raced to catch her, Chariot soon pulling ahead, but neither were fast enough to do so before she plunged limply into the lake.

* * *

Diana, the true Diana, the Maw of Oryx, held Thorn to the sky, guiding the magics of the Cavendish estate into the rupture. On the other side of it a necropolis lay in wait, a Hive warship brimming with seeders and blight shards. Once its shadow fell on Earth, the battle would end and a leisurely conquest begin. Victory was minutes away from certain.

But minutes away was not now, and as long as Akko and company lived, anything could happen. The Shiny Rod had surprised her once, and given its capabilities it may very well live to do so again, and if Diana fell, that would be the end of this furtive invasion.

The Maw of Oryx lowered her wand, gently gouging a tear on her cheek to focus her attention. She stepped to the edge of the platform, over Andrew's cooling body and through the pool of his tacky, drying blood. She saw her old self plummet into the lake; she saw Akko call the Shiny Valley to hand and, with Chariot's help, ride it into the lake after her.

Simply hurling spells at them at this range would be a fool's errand. She diverted some of the ritual's power and dreamed of teeth.

Victory was certain within minutes; all victory save for the ownership of Atsuko Kagari. She'd torn herself free from the event horizon twice. The Maw had one more chance, she knew it; the universe delighted in threes.

* * *

Finnelan had just enough space in her thoughts to realize this was the most she'd gotten out of her first aid training in years. " _Resaniga songo_ ," she said, waving her wand over Diana as she lay on her side, twitching and spasming in the grass. Diana hacked up a lungful of water and her breathing returned to normal, the blue around her lips slowly fading. Still she trembled; still she gasped intermittently for breath.

The four of them gathered around a restorative spell Croix cast, an ember of light that banished the icy water from their clothes and warmed them against the increasingly bitter winter night. Nobody dared vocalize that Venus should have come from behind the moon by now.

"Is she gonna be alright?" Akko said. Her hands wrung around the Shiny Valley's gently-textured surface.

"She'll be on her feet again soon..." Finnelan said. "but not soon enough."

Croix glared at the storm-wracked lake. "Taking out Diana may take too long. I never thought I'd say this, but..." She cleared her throat. "She's not gonna be having any fun with the Cavendish estate if we blow that sorcerer's stone."

"Blow it?" Akko said. "Like... up?"

"Yes m'am. It pains me to see it go, but, shit, we may be out of options."

Chariot looked at her wand. "It's going to be dangerous," she said. "The release of magical energy may be catastrophic."

"It's the most efficient sorcerer's stone in the world," Croix said. "Depending on the math, depending on its remaining operant lifespan, either that lake's going bye-bye or this _county's_ going bye-bye."

Akko looked down at Diana, whose contortions were beginning to slow. "I'm sorry it had to come to this," she said, barely audible.

"You two go on ahead," Croix said. "We'll watch Diana. If things go bad for you... we won't be far behind."

"Ask the one-armed woman to volunteer," Chariot said, smiling. "Of course."

A thick fog rose along the road leading up to the mansion. Croix aimed her Iscariot wand at it. "Better hurry."

Finnelan crouched over Diana. "Atsuko Kagari, I have..." This was so surreal that feeling the words on the tip of her tongue was like coughing up a dove. "I have total faith in your abilities. Leave all doubt behind." She drew a circle of light around herself and Diana, which unfolded into a reinforced defensive spell.

Chariot took the Valley in hand and cast the flight spell. She hopped onto the broom, one leg in front of the other, finding a good position to balance with only one arm. The Shiny Valley accommodated her, of course. If she'd had both arms, she could have been 18 again. Hell, even if she'd been missing her arm then...

Akko climbed behind her. "Riding to battle with Shiny Chariot for the fate of the Earth," she said. She threw her milk-white hair over her shoulder, still not wholly cognizant of the change in color. "Let's make this a story I can tell my grandkids."

Chariot squared her shoulders. "Tia freyre!" The Shiny Valley blazed to life, and the two of them charged the vortex.

Croix built a heady charge of black magic on her wand. A ghastly wail emanated from the fog, and dozens of Thrall rushed forth, all talons and teeth. "Taste the pain," she said, and launched the explosive spell into their midst.

* * *

Diana saw them coming, the Shiny Valley a streak of gold in the night sky. She was ready for them astride her broom, wand still pointed at the rupture. When the time came she would cast; until then the great work awaited its completion.

Chariot steered Valley around the storm. Something was wrong, Diana knew at once, and then the barrage of spells began, Chariot and Akko unloading blast spells not at her but at the Cavendish family sorcerer's stone, their spells marring its surface. The tides of magic flowing into the rupture ebbed and fluctuated, their pattern disturbed, the spell slowed.

This would not be allowed.

* * *

"Concentrate your fire! Shoot where I'm shooting!" Chariot said.

"Roger-roger!" Akko said, holding her wand steady with both hands, fixing the straight, shearing beam of Gutei no Yubi where Chariot's Iibrat Dashin rained its storm of explosive shards. Chariot fired in a continuous stream, blasting pock marks into the side of the stone that Akko's beam slowly turned into cuts.

The storm around the center column dissipated, revealing instead a mountainous tangle of blackened rose vines, tendrils of growth lashing at the Shiny Valley. Chariot struck back with a magic whip of her own, brilliant and aflame, constantly shifting her footwork on her broom to maintain her balance with the force of her great swings. "Keep shooting, Akko! I've got this!"

"I hear you!" Akko said, her wand growing hot in her hands as she tried to trace her own lines on the sorcerer's stone. It was rotating in the opposite direction they were flying and the surface was starting to glow and _ow crap_ a vine wrapped around her leg and bit. She flashed her wand down, severing the vine, and went back to shooting the crystal, gritting her teeth and trying to ignore the pain.

That she managed to do for a few seconds before realizing what remained of the vine was still digging into her. She broke off the spell, waved her wand to cool it off, and wrestled the vine with a telekinesis spell. "Out, out, out!" she said, trying to yank against the coils of the vine as they sought her veins. She poured her all into increasing the force of the spell and with a mighty sound she tore the vine to shreds. "Got it!" Akko said. She looked at Chariot to see if she'd made it out alright.

Chariot clasped her arm over her side; blood trickled under her arm. "Akko, are you alright?" she said.

Something whizzed through Akko's hair. Chariot grimaced. "She's shooting at us," she said, calling up a magic shield. Bullets pinged off it. "She's actually shooting-"

Taken Diana rose from the thicket of old-growth wood and undead vines, Andrew's enchanted pistol in one hand, her thorned wand in the other, both spewing hot death. Chariot's shield withered under Diana's spells.

"Hold on!" Chariot said, Shiny Valley downshifting violently and lurching Akko forward. She obeyed and held tight to the broom as Chariot put it through its paces, feinting and spinning and banking at stomach-lurching, head-spinning angles, dancing between the hail of fire.

"Chariot!" Akko said. "Watch out! She's gonna do something bad anytime now-"

Akko saw it before Chariot, the glow on the surface of the sorcerer's stone collecting in one facet, burning like a star. Before she could shout or steer or do anything about it, the stone fired.

* * *

Diana was breathing steadily now, and she'd stopped trembling. That was some small consolation as the flood of Thrall kept pouring from the fog.

Croix, the madwoman, rode her broom just above the reach of the monsters from the ground, encouraging them to leap at her, flying slow enough to be a target and fast enough that she could pour on just a little more gas to dart away from a leaping monster. She was having a fantastic time visiting every killing spell she knew upon the bony horrors.

The woman could cuss, too.

"Finn..." Diana mumbled.

"Ms. Cavendish?" Finnelan said. "Don't rush yourself. You've had a seizure."

"...hurts..."

"It would." Finnelan cast an analgesic spell. "We have this in hand. We'll sort this out in a few minutes and we can finally get back to Luna Nova. Luna Nova and as much gin as we can put down." The Thrall which didn't leap impotently at Croix were scratching, pounding, and biting at the shield, which held steady for now. It would hold for a while, but she hoped against hope it wouldn't have to.

Diana lifted her head. Her eyes fluttered open. "Cursed Thrall," she said.

"Cursed they are."

"No..." She pointed with her wand. One of the Thrall in the pack assaulting Croix did not run but slouched, its arms clutching its chest. Its eyeless head glowed a brilliant blue. "Cursed."

Croix flew above the pack, raining electric death and spewing vile invectives at their mothers and gods. The cursed Thrall slouched through the crowd of its rabid siblings, working its way towards her.

"Croix!" shouted Finnelan. "Watch it! There's... ah, dammit..." She spoke through a megaphone spell: "Croix! There's a cursed one! Mind the glowing-"

The cursed Thrall surged above the crowd, riding on another's back, and Croix fired an energy bolt at it.

It exploded.

The shield groaned under its impact and the impact of shattered stones and a dense plume of soil. Finnelan covered Diana and wondered, briefly, if they would be given to the other Diana or if they'd be eaten instead. The memory of what happened to Nelson bubbled up and she realized they could very well do both.

Their view of the outside world was still blocked by rolling clouds of dust. Her wand was pointed at Diana's head-not on purpose, no. It just happened to do so when she threw her body over her ailing student.

"Diana," Finnelan said, "if the worst should happen..."

"It will," Diana said. Her eyes were open. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't die fighting."

Finnelan gripped her wand tight. "You're certain."

"I have to be." Diana tried to sit up. "Please, get out of the way..."

"Diana, you just had a seizure. I can't."

With some effort, Diana said, "Would you make this patch of grass my deathbed?"

In silence, Finnelan helped her stand. They waited for the clouds to fall away, but they didn't have to wait for the remaining Thrall to pound the shield. Each strike made the cracks developing in the spell pulse with green light.

* * *

Chariot's reflexes were admirable. Even after years of teaching, her edge sung in the wind. She almost called up her shield against the pulse of energy from the sorcerer's stone; for a moment, a screen of light flickered at the tip of her wand.

The beam from the sorcerer's stone destroyed her wand and her left arm, burning away everything to the shoulder.

The Shiny Valley rocketed at full speed, zipping in a chaotic arc around the pillar. Akko screamed Chariot's name.

Chariot knelt on the broom, eyes wide and blank, the wound cauterized by the intensity of the spell. Her air billowed in the wind and with the g-forces. She was breathing, steadily.

Still standing. Still alive. Akko clung to this.

"Akko," Chariot said, "fight forever." She stood; the sorcerer's stone charged another shot. Bellowing at the top of her lungs, she leaped from the Shiny Valley, through thirty yards of storm-wracked airspace, and as the stone fired at Akko, landed a full-force magically-empowered kick at the head of the unicorn statue.

The statue's head shattered, the stone fell loose from its mounting, and the beam ionized the air over Akko's head. Chariot vaulted from the ruins of the horse's head and into a web of vines climbing desperately up the pillar; the sorcerer's stone fall was arrested by another thicket catching and lowering it gently to the platform, nesting it against Beatrix's final resting place like a grave offering.

Akko willed the broom to slow down, and it did, coming to an abrupt stop. The tendrils delivered Chariot to the Taken Diana, who hovered before the tree of Cavendish. "Won't you come get her, Atsuko?" the Maw pronounced. The vines wound around Chariot's neck, their black-petaled flowers pressing at the sides of her mouth.

Chariot was not afraid. She seemed almost relieved.

Far above them in the chill vault of space between Earth and the moon, something was passing through the rupture.

Akko had an idea.

* * *

Croix's ears rang, her body ached like a bad bruise, her arm hurt worst of all and didn't respond to her commands, and she couldn't breathe or see in the debris cloud kicked up by all those exploding alien sonsabitches.

She was also losing altitude, or else the fluids in her ears were kicked completely out of whack and she felt like she was losing altitude.

Nope, that was the ground under her feet. She felt up along the broom and felt the mana cap end in a jagged twist of metal. Well, Nyarlat Hotep either wanted to see her make another day or had a much, much more interesting death in mind for her. She dropped the broom and checked her arm. She flinched as she touched exposed bone. Her hand was open, her wand could be anywhere.

There was a voice in her head, soft and near inaudible under the insistent ringing, saying that she was going to die here. "Not today," she said to whoever was interested, and fumbled for her wand with her other hand, half-crouched, eyes half-open, ears trying to pick out any sound through the slowly-dimming buzz.

A Thrall hurtled through the cloud and latched on to her broken arm. She punched it in the side of the head, cursing at it, but Chariot was the one who hit like a truck instead of just taking hits like one. It gnawed on her wound contently, chewing the shattered ends of her bone and swallowing spilling blood.

Others loped from the dust; two latched onto her leg and gnawed at her thigh and calf, another grabbed her head and wrenched her shoulders down, revealing her neck. She grit her teeth, trying to headbutt the Thrall trying to chow down on her neck. "Not like this," she said, "not like thi-"

An eruption of light cut through the gloom. The Thrall at her neck turned its eyeless gaze towards the source, and a bolt of void light pierced the dome of its head. It collapsed to dust as its brethren let her go, throwing her to the ground as they teamed up against the caster. She lay on the ground wondering what in hell just happened. Did the Taken Diana have a change of heart?

Void light sprayed through the air, dispelling the last of the dust kicked up by the exploding one. Diana walked into view, crouching over her. She was pale, sweating, and panting, but on her feet. "Professor Croix." Finnelan followed close behind her, looking quite astonished.

"You're looking better already," Croix said. "Don't suppose you have any healing spells you could get going? ... Can you see my wand...?"

"We'll find it." She regarded her wand. "Brace yourself, this isn't going to be enjoyable." She knelt over Croix, resting the rose blooming between the prongs just over her injury. "You who have bloomed with succor in a time of pain... I dub you Rose. May Thorn be only your shadow."

"Lovely poetry, kid, but speed up with the-" Her shattered radius forced itself into place and sprouted fibers to string itself back together. "-ohh _fuck me that hurts_!"

"I tell no lies," Diana said.

* * *

Akko wasn't giving up.

Her third chance was slipping away. Akko wrested the Valley towards her, brows furrowed, a spell on her lips. Trying to... what, exactly? Fly at her? After months of frenzied study to no avail?

With half a thought she commanded the vines to finish their job; with the rest, she raised and aimed the little pistol that had already given them a great deal of grief. For all the power and fury of a magical war-spell, in her brief experience with plain firearms she was already quite fond of them. There was something special about wounding a creature of magic with something as simple and inert as a lead pellet at high speeds. Like spitting on their face with just a little more intensity.

She drew a bead on Akko's chest and imagined her drowning in blood. The thought was too beautiful to not come true.

She pulled the trigger just as Akko said "Tia _frayre!_ "

The Shiny Valley hit maximum speed, a sonic boom sounding its wake, and before she could fire again she was burning alive from the inside out.

The Shiny Valley had impaled her, burying its cap deep into the tree of Cavendish. The vines enrobing it burned and shriveled. Her ichor seeped around the wound, boiling away to nothing. The light of the Valley-the light of the Claoimh Solais, a paracausal weapon forged in the image of the Sky-flowed into her like venom.

She was dying.

She looked up from her wound and into Akko's eyes. Her eyes were filled with something she had never seen before: fury. Not hate, but fury, purposeful, knowing, justified, and driven. In her eyes Diana had been delivering atrocity after atrocity, after all. Even now, in the hour of twilight, she refused to grasp the Sword Logic.

The strength left her hands. Her Thorn and the gun slipped from her grasp, falling to the platform below. She raised her casting hand, reaching for Akko's face.

"Akko..." Diana said. Three words were on her lips, waiting to be said.

Before she could say them, Akko shoved her wand into the Maw's eye. " _Murowa._ "

Diana felt her brains blown free from her head, heard them splattering against the Tree of Cavendish; she felt the power of the House of Cavendish, a mantle of warmth and power that swaddled her in her perpetual agony, slide away from her, leaving the icy agony of her existence exposed to the spiritual elements. Her six-dimensional hyperbody unfolded and collapsed into the singularity, leaving nothing behind but a smear of brains.

In the instant of her death, Diana knew she had failed.

* * *

The rupture collapsed. Its energies, uncontrolled, severed the prow of the necropolis and vented its force into the craft, wiping out almost every Hive within.

Bodiless, one in ten crew surviving, the piece of the necropolis fell into an unstable orbit.

* * *

Akko stared at the spatter of blue blood and inky matter on the Tree of Cavendish and felt a sick relief in her chest. She took a deep breath and coughed it up, bloody phlegm accompanying her cough.

Her chest was warm. The Taken Diana had shot her in the lung.

Chariot. The vines the Taken Diana had called up were wilting, rotting, ferrying Chariot down with them; Akko kicked at the tree and the Valley shoved itself out of the hole it made. Wobbling, unsteady, she brought the broom to the platform, trying to hold her breath and failing. Shiny Valley became the Shiny Rod again, the weight familiar and warm in her hands. She walked over to Chariot, hand over her wound, the Shiny Rod half carried and half dragged.

Chariot lay in an ungainly heap, legs splayed and bent at odd angles. Her eyes, half-lidded and unfocused, were bereft of light; an ocean of blood poured from her mouth as the vines which had writhed into her lungs withered away to nothing.

Leaving her wound uncovered, Akko took her by Andrew. Gasping every breath, unable to dispel the need to breathe, she fell to her knees. She wasn't done yet. She needed to make Chariot and Andrew presentable. They were wonderful people. They were so brave. It didn't make sense that in sacrificing themselves they should look so foolish. Some things had to be set right. If only she could catch her breath.

With every breath foamy blood flecked her lips. Death was waiting for her.

She barely heard Diana make landfall. "Akko!"

She looked up. Diana rushed to her, lifted her up. "Akko," Diana repeated. "The sixth word is _Lyonne._ "

The sixth stone was practically aflame with light, against the dimming of her vision. She saw Diana, holding her upright, desperately working a healing spell; she saw Finnelan, Croix leaning against her. They were saying something. What were they saying...?

Did it matter?

Here, at the end of the world, together, they had looked the darkness in the eye and made it blink.

Chariot. All this time, the woman she had admired most in all the world had put everything on the line to help her reach for her dreams. Could she have dreamed of a more wonderful turn of events?

And Diana. Diana, whose beauty had taken her breath away the moment they met; who had been stern, who had been strong with her, but only because she had needed it to achieve greatness. Who had such vast and hidden gulfs of pain in her heart. Who had fallen into the abyss, and who she had rescued... and who had in turn rescued her.

She had the most beautiful eyes Akko had ever seen, and she was saying this word: " _Lyonne!_ "

And here at the end of the world Akko said the word " _Lyonne_ " and knew what it meant.

"Thank you."

* * *

In Wedinburgh, the raging battle had drawn to an abrupt halt at the closing of the rupture overhead, the Hive demoralized and cut adrift; now an early dawn of magic lit the horizon, a miracle of warmth and light.

Cloaked by the false dawn, the Wild Hunt descended.

* * *

She could breathe.

She was holding on to someone.

She coughed, and she felt the gnarled bullet in her chest pop free of her wound as it closed. Oh, boy, that was not a fun feeling, and it was a feeling going around from the sound of pained, desperate gasps on either side of her. Who was...?

Andrew. Hand over his neck, eyes wide with panic, green light stitching closed the wound in his throat.

Chariot. Staring at the sky, each breath dispelling green magic spores into the night air.

She was holding on to Diana. Diana, mumbling a long, breathless invocation to Shub-Niggurath, held two wands, one wreathed in roses, the other in thorns. Her blood flowed, but mana flowed too. The Shiny Rod had stolen Andrew and Chariot from the gulf of death, but even its miracles had their limits; Diana was keeping them anchored here.

Diana dropped her wands at last, and slumped into Akko's arms. The sorcerer's stone, taxed to its limit, died. The light guttered and the stone crumbled to powder.

Andrew lifted his head. "Did we win?" he said, his voice hoarse.

"You're goddamn right we did," Chariot said, relieved.

"Don't fucking do that again," Croix said, stumbling away from Finnelan and towards Chariot. "I mean it. You're a goddamn idiot but you're too pretty to give to the worms."

"Thank you," Chariot said, nudging herself into a seated position with what remained of her right arm.

Trembling, Finnelan doffed her hat, retrieved a blunt from a case hidden inside it, and lit up, holding in a lungful of weed as long as she could.

"The power of the House of Cavendish," Diana said. "That was all. That was the last. The rest... the rest I fed to the rupture." She spoke into Akko's shoulder.

"Diana," Akko whispered, "that wasn't you. You never would have done it."

"It was me," she said, trembling, crying. "I killed my aunt and my cousins. I killed the servants. I fed the horses and dogs to the Thrall. I offered the Earth to Oryx... because I wanted you. Because I wanted you all to myself, forever."

Akko's heart skipped a beat.

"I wasn't supposed to feel love... but I did. For you. My life has been nothing but hardship. Years spent wondering if I'd ever be capable of magic... my father, dead... my mother, wasted away because she cared too much... my aunt, auctioning off everything that meant anything to us. Oryx knew... Oryx knew, and he took away everything about me that made me care. He took away my hope.

"But he couldn't take away you. Every awful thing I did, every abominable act... was because I wanted to break you. To bring you to the depths of ultimate despair, so you could be Taken. And so we could be together forever. Past the death of Earth. I... I dreamed... I never slept, but I dreamed. That one day we would kill the Taken King and gain his strength through the Sword Logic and we would consume the universe and in the end it would only be you and me... entwined together as a perfect final shape.

"Atsuko, I can't look at you without knowing that I have killed and blasphemed and ruined out of love for you." Her hand went to Akko's. "I can't live with myself. So... please. Leave. You don't have to see this. I'm done."

Akko lifted her head and looked her in the eyes.

"Diana Cavendish," she said, "if you wanna go back into the dark, I'll have to go after you again. And again. And again. As long as it takes 'til you can live with yourself and remember how to be happy." She kissed her. Her lips were dry and cracked, but they were perfect, nonetheless. "And I don't have to remind you that I am very dumb and very stubborn, so the angels are gonna be really annoyed that I keep taking you back."

Diana made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "You idiot. Giving your heart to a monster like me."

"Monster girlfriends are cool," Akko said, and kissed her again.

Chariot smiled, leaning against Croix.

"God, we never got that sappy, did we?" Croix said.

"Now and again," Chariot said.

She could have said a lot of things-asking which one of them was the worse monster, perhaps, or how maybe Chariot could use some time with the angels herself and sort things out, or how Croix was really the one who should just get on with it and hurl herself into the depths of that vortex.

Or, it had been a vortex. Akko was on death's doorstep when Lyonne actually went off; the resulting storm of healing magics had drained the lake entirely. It was building into quite an impressive thunderhead, obscuring everything save the moon and Venus as it escaped its shadow; the flooding would be monstrous.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sorcery unit floating into sight and issuing a series of inquisitive beeps. She took a moment to decode them, her head still not caught up with her body.

Sorcery units descended en masse on the property. The headmistress had come through, bless the old bat. She sorted out her thoughts, grabbed the first sorcery unit, and said, "Ransack this place. Everything of value or interest, absolutely everything. And if you can find that dragonet, electroplate the shit out of that thing and bring it to me."

"What are we doin'..." Akko said. Sorcery units broke apart from the pack and set down at their feet. "Oh... right. Those four other tombships."

"Four..." Finnelan said, choking on a puff of smoke.

"Heaven can wait," Diana said, gripping her wands tight. "There's work for us in hell."

* * *

Far away, on his osmium throne, the Taken King chuckled.

"This was not the coup father was anticipating," Ir Anuk said.

"But it was a delightful showing, nonetheless," Ir Halak said.

"To think the planet was within our grasp," Crota said, grinding the tip of his namesake sword into the floor. "It is infuriating that the Maw should fail so pitifully."

A brief silence fell in the court. A voice that should have spoken remained silent as it would be silent before and silent after. Should you feel the urge, O reader mine, say a little prayer for Nokris.

"The planet will be interred in the Worlds Grave in time," Oryx said. "Our losses were insignificant. And we have learned from this small failure. May we be more judicious in Taking those with abilities unbound from causality by the Light." He held up his right claw, in which lay the Maw of Oryx.

Diana Cavendish lay sprawled in Oryx's talons. "Where am I?" she said.

"In My Court," the Taken King pronounced. "I am an honest king: your death is hidden well in me. And you shall be a useful Taken. You will gnaw new paths through the stars to vulnerable places where my armies shall be uncontested. You will be put to work until you become great or until you become wormfood."

"Earth," she said. "When will we reach Earth?"

Oryx deigned grant her a sense of scale and place.

Earth was on the other side of the galaxy. If the Taken King were to burn everything and pursue Sol at maximum speed, they would arrive in time to see Akko's great-grandchildren inter their venerable ancestor.

The dream of Atsuko Kagari was dead. Acid tears streamed down Diana Cavendish's face. The shape of no hope eclipsed her sanity.

The Darkness consumed her.


	6. The Sky and the Deep (Epilogue)

**Epilogue: The Sky and the Deep**

"Best advice a manual will give you: tell the people you love that you love them." -your friend, Dmitri

Akko didn't remember much of that night, not in a coherent sense. When prodded, she could summon specifics, but only two memories were crystal-clear, feeling like she'd lived them.

Mostly she remembered the smells. Gasoline, gunpowder, the smoke of things killed or blown up by alien weapons, the tarry, starry stuff that congealed on the sides of buildings Taken had passed by, the coppery smell of blood, the dusty, dry-rot stink of the Hive.

She remembered her friends. Chariot fighting in spite of missing all of one arm and half the other. Croix nested at the heart of a conflux of sorcery units spraying death and obscenities. Prof. Finnelan, high as the proverbial kite and her spells showing it as they lit the night with surreal, mind-nurturing colors and patterns.

She remembered people, stuck under things flipped over or fallen down, huddling in corners and basements. Kids with blank faces, kids inconsolable in their despair, kids who seemed to come alive when she approached, awash in Hive ash and Taken ichor.

The first specific memory was halfway through, she was pretty sure it was halfway through, kicking in the door to a blasted-out storefront and prying open a basement door. She felt a sick asynchronicity, one that was only now familiar when she realized it was what she felt when Prof. Nelson had spoken to them after she had been Taken.

Nelson was there, running her hand down Andrew's dad's side, going for his pants. His pants ended at the knee and spurt blood. Not far away there was a young boy clenching fresh wounds and struggling to breathe.

She killed Nelson again, though she didn't remember how, only that it must have been pretty quick. Nelson had said something, maybe, like "Come on" or "Not again" or "Go away." Some sorcery units following her broke free from the pack and issued magic and technologic medical care while sounding an alert for medical services.

She was pretty sure the medics got there in time. She remembered a lot about that store's basement, especially telling someone that there was a lot of bottled water in there in case anyone needed it.

She remembered Diana, fighting like a warrior-goddess, paired wands spewing death and life and light.

She remembered firing the Shiny Arc's blast through the meaty tumor-head of a Hive ogre. That was neat.

She remembered saying goodbye to Diana at a triage tent. A barrage of questions that made no sense. Chocolate bars and bottled water. A hotel room. A hot shower. Sleep.

A dream.

* * *

In her dream she saw something that was perhaps a moon and perhaps a person. She could tell, just from standing in its shadow, that it loved her as much as her mom loved her.

There were other people, she could feel. She couldn't see them, but they were here, endless numbers of people, most yet to even be born. She could feel the love the moon-person felt for them.

The love it felt was everywhere save within the moon.

"Why do you hate yourself?" Akko said.

Because, the moon said, I am a coward. When the Darkness comes, I flee. I want to run away even now, but Rasputin says he won't let me. The Darkness is almost upon me. You who have fought the Darkness, why did you stay?

Akko thought a moment, but only a moment.

"Love."

Love is the most beautiful thing. Who do you love?

"Everyone... all my friends, my teacher who's also my hero Shiny Chariot. And Diana. She was in danger, she was Taken by some big alien space guy, but I fought back and got her back and everything's alright now. I mean, she has seizures now and again, but that's why she got the dog... is that too much information? I think I'm blabbing a little bit."

You have not spoken too much. Far from it.

Akko could not hear what the other people were saying. But she could feel it.

It is decided, then, the moon said. I am afraid. But I won't run anymore. I have hurt so many people I loved by running. If it means my end, may the love I feel carry my Light to you. Children of the Light, may you all find happiness.

Akko awoke in tears, but she was smiling.

* * *

Akko tapped her foot and watched the flameless heat ration... well, exist, under her All-Day Breakfast packet. "Hurry u-u-u-p," she said.

There was a knock at the door. "Hey, Akko, you're still alive, right?" Sucy said.

Akko hopped to her feet and raced to the hotel room's door. "You guys?!" she said.

Lotte leaped through the door and grappled Akko in a massive hug. "Akko, Akko, Akko, I'm so glad you're alright!" she said.

"Yeah, me too," Sucy said, slithering her way in. "You missed the big breakfast. Some of the local cooks and some of the chef fairies from Luna Nova teamed up to make a giant feast for the soldiers and witches and normal people." She glared at the cardboard box Akko set next to the work table. "Why the hell are you eating military rations? You killed Urzok the Hated, that's free drinks for life anywhere that's still pouring, easy."

"Who?" Akko said as Lotte finally let her go.

"Urzok, the Hated. It was on the news. Big guy, golden armor?" Sucy rooted through the rest of the ration box. "Diana said his name when he stomped into view, he roared at you, she put that thundercloud over him with her pokey wand... then you kinda went to town while he got struck by lightning." She squeezed a packet of peanut butter directly into her mouth. "It was pretty metal."

She thought a moment. "Oh... yeah! That guy. Yeah, that was... that was fun. Is my all-day breakfast done?"

Sucy poked the foil pouch. "Eh, maybe."

"We've been helping with the relief efforts since about five in the morning," Lotte said.

"Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I myself have been awake since like ten last night when Holbrooke pulled the apocalypse switch." Sucy said, licking her teeth. "Everybody who could feasibly kick an ass got pulled to go kick ass. Then when you were done killing all those aliens they passed the donate-your-time-and-energy hat around and I was all, well, hey, free vacation."

"Half the town's been leveled," Lotte said. "I've been putting up tents and bedrolls and singing lullabies and handing out milk and tea and water. There's so much history gone, so many homes..." She sat on Akko's bed.

Akko slumped into the desk's chair. "Man... I hope Diana's alright. They took her to the hospital, right? Did she get to a hospital? I remember leading her to the whatsit tent so they could look her over."

"The Royal One, yeah," Sucy said. She thought a moment about the news blackout regarding the Sick Childrens' Hospital and fell silent.

"Do you know where the aliens came from?" Lotte said.

"I'll tell you next time," Akko said. "Can we just hang out? Rest a little?"

"I'm surprised you're awake at all," Sucy said. "You got retired from battle at... four in the morning? It's only ten."

Akko's stomach roared with disdain. "I had a friend wake me up."

"Ah," Sucy said. "Nice hair, by the way," Sucy said.

"Oh? I didn't comb it or anything," Akko said, grabbing a lock. "Normally it takes a whi... ... ... ...why is it white." She rushed to the mirror and checked herself. Her hair was milk-white and brittle. So were her eyebrows. So were her eyelashes. She checked downstairs real quick. "How. How did my hair-"

Against her better judgment, she remembered the face of the Taken King.

"Oh, right." She reached for the maple bar packet, opened it, and munched it down aggressively. "Led's dog aboud some'in' else."

"Alright," Sucy said. "Why the hell are you eating a military ration?"

"'Cause I never had one before."

"What does it taste like, Akko Kagari?"

"Dry and sad. It tastes like dryness and sadness."

"And this is how soldiers get PTSD: they get shot at all day and come home to this."

* * *

The Royal Hospital was packed as far above capacity as the hospital staff and army medics dared, but here, for the time being, the noises were distant, the motion centered elsewhere as doctors treated ludicrous wounds and witches cast spells with energy drawn from clever little wireless mana routers. Here, Paul and Andrew could talk.

So for a long while neither of them did.

Andrew was dressed in his pants from the night before, stained and torn, and a fresh undershirt he'd gotten from a soldier handing out bundles of clothes taken from a not-wholly-destroyed department store. His father lay still in bed, looking, in turn, at his hands and the space on his bed where the rest of his legs should have lain.

His roommate was a small boy, sleeping contently in a haze of painkillers as modern medicine and healing magic combined to restore him from the edge of death.

Andrew empathized with the boy. But he couldn't begin to guess how his father would react to news that he had spent some time inarguably and totally dead.

"Andrew... do you remember the woman we met yesterday?"

"Anna? I do."

"She's dead. One of the confirmed dead. The... 'Acoyltes' got to her. Her sister, too." He breathed, slowly. "She had a daughter. Dead." He removed his glasses, laying them in his lap. He didn't look at him. "You were right, Andrew. All this blood... it's on my hands."

"Dad..."

"Those witches brought you home. They drove off the aliens. They're here in this very hospital and in the streets, saving the people I failed. I've failed Britain and I've failed you, and above all else I've failed my Creator. 'Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.'"

Andrew took his father's hand. "Dad, however you feel about yourself right now... I'm glad you're alive. 'The pain that you feel you only can heal by living.'"

His father didn't smile, per se, but perhaps his cast lightened, just a little. "That verse I don't recognize."

"It's, ah... from Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"Really, now."

"It's a good show." Andrew smiled in his stead. "Sometime... sometime later, we'll have to watch it." He thought about the thing he had came here to say. He deliberated a good, long while before deciding to never speak of it.

* * *

Of all the people that could have been chosen to do the speaking, it fell down to Finnelan. She supposed it was due to being the only one present last night who was not a young girl or maimed and who was coherent enough to memorize the party line they'd settled on. Before a firing squad of cameras and microphones and Mormo knows what else, she prayed that she didn't look as high as she was.

"Daryl Cavendish was coerced into summoning to Earth an alien species known as the Hive. The Hive are eusocial undead proficient in black magic, including the ability to 'Take' individuals to use as black-magic-infused infantry. The source of the invasion has been destroyed by the actions of Atsuko Kagari and Chariot du Nord, with assistance from Diana Cavendish, Croix Meridies, myself, and Adrian Nelson, who was tragically Taken and subsequently slain.

"The Hive which exist now are all that will reach Earth. Arcane lore has it on good authority that the Taken King, the central deity of the Hive, is too far from Earth to influence it further, and the source of his intrusion has been located and destroyed by Croix Meridies."

She paused. Some stations would splice in footage of Croix's destruction of the worm-thing in the pause; others would air it before or after her speech. Croix made a show of dropping the small, silver-plated thing into a bomb disposal chamber, step back, and let her sorcery units flash-fry the thing with a hail of plasma. She revealed to the camera-held by Finnelan herself-the remains of the beast. A sorcery unti plastered with hazardous waste stickers rolled over it, vacuuming up the cubic chunks of ash which were its remains, before surrendering the unit to a hazardous waste disposal crew.

"Further action is in the hands of domestic and international government and ruling bodies of witchery. For my part and on the part of my fellow faculty and students, Luna Nova has pledged its support to helping the survivors of Wedinburgh and the city itself heal to its former glory. Thank you, and good day." She stepped away, practicing her breathing exercises, and when she had the time and privacy, lit another fat blunt, passing it between herself, Croix, and on Chariot's behalf.

* * *

It was almost seven in the evening when Akko visited Diana.

Diana was the only woman in the entire hospital with her own room. From what the nurse had told her, she had spent much of her waking time typing as much intel she had on the Hive and the Taken as she could write down (not that the nurse said "Hive" or "Taken," just "the enemy"). Now, at last, she was done for the day.

Akko opened the door a crack and peered inside, just a moment. She saw a feeding tube looped into Diana's nose, or at least she assumed that's what itwas.

"Should I... what should I do about the tube?" Akko whispered.

"Don't mention it!" Lotte said.

"I won't, but I'm asking for advice about the tube-"

"She means don't talk about the tube even if she wiggles it in your face and asks if you want some," Sucy said. "You can trust me when I tell you this because nine times out of ten I will never lie if I can help it."

"Right! Going in! Flight of the Conchords!" Akko held her breath and stepped through the door.

The room was at the top floor of the hospital, and its window faced the direction of Diana's family estate. The storm that began early in the morning had poured nonstop ever since, lightning distant but ever-present throughout the day. It didn't stray from the estate; the sky was almost cloudless, shocking blue over the wounded city. Diana looked up at Akko. Akko perked up, smiled, and said, "Diana, are you feeling alright? How's the tube?"

"Zhardammit, Akko!" Sucy shouted through the door.

Diana took a deep breath. "I... tried eating earlier." She exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. "Meat was out of the question. I couldn't even... I tried salad. I really tried. But I can't stop thinking about..." She covered her mouth, heaving into her palm.

Akko walked over, uncertain. "I'm sorry I asked about the tube," she said.

"Akko, I can't... I just can't." Her eyes were wet. "I can't stop thinking about what it felt like to... to do the things I did. Even if... no matter who made me do it, it felt like my teeth... my mouth..." Her hands moved from her mouth to her eyes as she bawled helplessly into her palms. "Akko, I don't... I don't know if I can ever eat again!"

Akko hugged her, nesting her head in Diana's shoulder and Diana's head on her shoulder. Diana's hands slid from her face around Akko's back, pulling her closer. "I'm here," Akko said.

"Akko... what the hell am I going to do?" Her words came in uneasy gasps. "My home is gone. My life is gone. The power of Cavendish... it's all gone."

"Diana," Akko said, "what was your family known for?"

After a pregnant pause, Diana said, "Healing."

"Tell me about it."

Diana did. At first her voice was low, clipped, and stilted. The Nine Olde Witches; Beatrix Cavendish, whose soul-image was the unicorn whose touch brought relief to those in pain; fifteen hundred years of accomplishments, the never-ending battle against needless death. Hospitality to all in times of war. Kindness in the face of cruelty. The love of man enduring the inevitability of hate.

"And this is how it ends," Diana said.

"Yeah... bringing two people back to life." She kissed Diana's cheek, wondering if that was the worst thing she could have done even as she did it. "That was the last thing the power of Cavendish did. The old power of Cavendish."

"Old...?"

"Diana, if I'm gonna have to tell you this every day, I'm gonna. You got that?"

"I... think I do..."

"As long as you're here, the house of Cavendish lives. There's a lot you lost, but... well, remember the fifth Word? The family motto?"

"'An ancient tradition and a new power will open the path to the unseen world.'"

"Ancient tradition: you're a Cavendish. New power..." She gestured to Rose and Thorn, hanging from hooks on the wall, within easy grasp of Diana. "You may have lost a lot of the old, but, you know, that's just... stuff, right? Even the sorcerer's stone is just really fancy stuff. What matters most is the dream Beatrix Cavendish embodied. Now you're not in the shadow of all that old stuff. You're making the new old stuff just by being up and about and doing stuff... I mean, when you feel better, of course, not right now, necessarily."

"You've got a lot of these speeches stored up, don't you?" Diana said.

"Maybe. But you're still holding me, so if that's what it takes..." An idea burst in her head. "Wait. I just had a thought." She pinned down exactly what it was in the time it took Diana to ask her what the thought was. "So... meat's out, plants are out. What about ice cream?"

"Ice cream."

"Ice cream, baby." Akko looked around. "Where's the call-nurse button?"

There was ice cream, though perilously little. Supplies were flowing in from relief efforts, but frozen goods weren't chief among them. Thus after her tube was removed, Diana received a single scoop of vanilla ice cream with a little melted chocolate bar drizzled atop it. She took the hard plastic spoon in hand, dug it into the dessert, brought it to her lips, and pushed the spoon into her mouth.

It was cold and sweet and it brought nothing to mind save pleasant memories and the wide-eyed, open-mouthed smile Akko wore as she watched her eat.

She savored the mild taste and swallowed with only a little difficulty.

"Are you alright? Do you like it?" Akko said.

"I do," Diana said. She had half a thought to mention she couldn't live on ice cream, per se, but that would be energy wasted not eating the rest of the ice cream in a few frenzied, needy mouthfuls She drank what little had melted, set the bowl on the stand next to the bed, and settled against her pillows. Her stomach wrenched uncertainly, but to hell with it. It'd get used to the feeling again.

Akko had so many things to say: do you wanna try one with nuts or fruit next time? do you think cake would go down just as easy? does it smell kind of cheap in here to be a high-end hoity-toity superhospital? But really, she only needed to say one thing. She pressed her forehead against Diana's and said, "I love you."

"I love you, too," Diana said, taking Akko's head in her hand and tilting her, just so, so they could kiss.

Diana's lips were healing and gently splashed with sweets. They were just as perfect as before.

* * *

Time passed.

* * *

Two weeks before Luna Nova's next year began, a letter clattered in Diana's mailbox. It was a new addition to keep up with her rather dramatic increase in mail; her service dog, a soft, perpetually-smiling cross between a Golden Retriever and a Samoyed, fetched the letter and trotted up to Diana at her writing desk. She took the letter and gave him a gentle scratch under the chin as she opened it with a spell.

It was an invitation from Akko to meet her in the ornamental garden.

"The ornamental garden," Diana said to her dog. "Do you know about that one, Traveler? Have you heard?"

Traveler responded with a soft _ura-ra_ and smiled at her.

"I'll tell you the story on the way." She conjured his leash. "We're going for a walk, boy."

* * *

Akko stood straight as a ruler as Chariot adjusted her bow tie for the millionth time. Other than the bright red bow tie, Akko wore the standard Luna Nova uniform, freshly pressed, and a new hat, as her original hat went missing sometime during the Late Unpleasantness.

(She'd left it in Andrew's dad's car. Andrew's dad's car was vaporized by a Hive Knight's boomer. So it goes.)

She had pondered dying her hair, as she had pondered dying her hair at least a few minutes of every day since the Late Unpleasantness, but she'd never wound up doing it, mundanely or magically. She wore her new white hair as a badge of pride, except whenever her mother cried about it. (She'd cried about it a good long time when she and dad came up to visit.)

Speaking of things that arose difficult feelings in her, maybe she could've straightened her bow tie faster with her own hands, but she wanted Chariot to do this. Last month Constanze, with some help from Croix, rolled out a new line of magic-router-powered cyberlimbs (always "cyberlimbs" in her emails and fliers and interviews, never "prosthetics"). Chariot enjoyed the first pair. They weren't as strong as the ones she'd been born with, or as precise, but they were her hands now. With soft plastic-capped fingers she tapped Akko's bow. "There," she said. "Done."

She stepped back and looked Akko over as Akko looked her over. Chariot wore the special wooden cases on her arms today, the hand-carved rosewood cases that made her arms look a little more traditionally witchy. In Akko's humble, unbiased opinion, they made Chariot's spectacular beauty even more distinctive and magnificent.

"Do I look okay?" Akko said. "Am I sweating?"

"No, not yet." Chariot flashed her two thumbs up. "I'd hug you but I don't want to go back to start just yet. We'll be watching! Give us the sign!" She inched away at first, then galloped, leaping behind a bench.

Akko seated herself on that bench.

Diana's adorable dog tapped into the ornamental garden first. Diana took in the beauty of the place: a tall octagonal room with a skylight letting in the comforting autumn afternoon sun. The walls were wreathed in vines. A small, dark-barked tree dominated the center of the garden, and a small artificial creek flowing from the magic tree's roots ran under her feet, visible through transparent pavement. Traveler licked at the water to no avail.

"Happy birthday, Diana," Akko said. A pair of presents were in her lap, one a long rectangle, the other a small box. "How's it going?"

"Just fine, thank you," Diana said, following Traveler as he sniffed at the flowering bushes. "April 30th... time flies."

Akko pat the bench. "I wanted to celebrate someplace special. And what's more special than this weird little out-of-place garden?"

"The Jennifer Memorial Tree, perhaps?" Diana said, taking her seat.

"Aw, nah. We kind of got off to a bad start there, you know?"

"And somehow that seemed less good of an idea to you than the Garden of Doomed Love?"

"The what now?"

"This place, here." Diana gestured grandly. "It was installed by Headmistress Christie to court her beloved archduke. The archduke, it turned out, was disinterested in forward women who took the lead in courting, and the thaumatobotonist at the time thought the courtship gift was intended for her. A few broken hearts and especially painful murders later and this part of Luna Nova is only ever frequented by the fairies who have to tend it."

"...huh," Akko said.

"Did Sucy recommend this place?"

"Yeah."

Diana smiled. "Of course. Is it too soon to open my presents?"

"No, not at all," Akko said, handing them over to Diana.

Traveler sniffed them, as he sniffed all things, as Diana felt for the folds in the top box and tore the wrapping paper with satisfied ease. She pried open the cardboard box inside and stared, lips parted just so, at its contents. "Akko, is this..." She lifted her old teddy bear from inside the box. His fur was bright and clean, restored by careful sorceries.

"Mm-hm!" Akko said. "Prof. Croix said this stuff was clean, so there you go. I know it's not as important as the other stuff she's gotten back to you, but... you know, I wanted to do a little something for you. Nice and personal, you know?"

Diana gave the bear a test hug. On any other day, she told herself, it would be going back in the box and waiting to be placed in an aesthetically pleasing place in her room. But today, a hug was necessary. "Thank you," she said, seating the bear at her side. She scooted closer to Akko and ran her fingers along the next box. "This one feels heavy..."

"Yeah, it would be." Akko watched Diana open this one slowly, almost hesitantly. "Take your time, we're here all day."

Diana discarded the paper to reveal a long alabaster box, one she recognized at once. "Akko..." She pried open the lid. Inside was _A Believing Heart Is Your Magic._ She sniffled.

"Diana... I know whoever this belonged to must have cared about it a lot."

"It was mine," Diana said, taking the card from its box.

"You... you collected Chariot cards?!" Akko's jaw dropped. "Ohhhh man! Oh man oh man oh man!"

Diana held the card up to the light. Maybe it was her feelings more than a trick of the light, but the art seemed to glow.

Behind the bench, Chariot bit her thumb. She had always wondered if that one was in good taste, Croix insisting that if people were gonna whack off to her, at least they could whack off to something with artistic merit. Chariot was never certain how to react to that idea and generally tried to put it out of her mind.

"I only had this," Diana said. "It was a souviner my mother bought me when we saw Shiny Chariot in Japan."

That made Chariot's heart skip a beat.

"Wait... like _the_ show in Japan? The one I went to?! Oh man, oh man oh man!" Akko hopped up and danced a little jig. Traveler tapped his paws semi-rhythmically so he'd fit in. "I can't believe we were so close so long ago... oh man, what if we'd met then and there? Wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that..." She stopped when she saw Diana had returned the card to the box, and was crying.

"My mother... she was the only... the only one of my family... not to make fun of me. For loving Chariot." She set the box beside her and curled up on the bench. "It was the... the last time she ever got out of the country... she was so happy. She was..."

Akko wrapped her arms around her shoulder. "Go on," she cooed. "Let it all out."

Diana sobbed into her knees. "I miss her so much, Akko. I miss them all so much. I don't... She... Mormo be with me, I miss Daryl. And Maril and Meril. I hated them for so long I forgot that my mother loved them and they loved my mother and... maybe they weren't very good at it... but they loved me too."

Akko was crying too. Somehow, she was maintaining her composure better than Diana. Traveler propped himself up on the bench, pressing against the two of them, warm and soft and softly whimpering in sympathy.

"You're doing right by them," Akko said. "I mean... every day, you get a little better at being you. You've been eating regularly... you've been taking your medicine... you do your little practice things with Traveler. And all the donations... you're, what, 17? And you started that, ah, that House of Cavendish Foundation. While studying for finals. And helping the UN sniff out the Hive... you're a living miracle, do you know that?"

Diana took long, whimpering breaths.

"I always fell in love with heroes... and now a hero loves me back. And I'm so happy to say that sometimes I think I'm dreaming on my feet."

Diana raised her head. She was crying, but she was smiling.

"If it was a dream..." she said. "And we woke up tomorrow... I'd find you, and give you a kiss, and say I dreamed the same dream, and I love you all the same."

Akko kissed her, and Diana kissed back, their tears mingling on their lips. In such a fashion did their sorrow become beautiful and their pain become joy.

* * *

Late that night, Chariot caught Croix outside the New Moon Tower.

"I'm going to tell them," Chariot said.

Croix held still. "A little forward, isn't it? Letting the closet open and all the skeletons spill out?" She smiled wryly. "Unless you're talking about your own closet."

"They deserve to know."

"They deserve a little more happiness," Croix said. "And if you dredge up ancient history, something they can't do anything about, you're just cutting open an old wound and letting it bleed because you, precious little you, can't abide keeping all that guilt to yourself."

Chariot tried to speak.

"While you're at it, how about putting out a press release? 'Diana Cavendish, survivor of an ancient magic bloodline, ended that bloodline with a cannibal massacre.' Do you want me to release the bodies? Those human-shaped teeth marks that match Diana's dentition? The images my sorcery units took? The readings? The weird, black-magic badness that's still glowing hot on that spikey wand of hers? Should I explain that we have a means of hypothetically bringing back all those sonsabitches that got Taken, so we can drag Akko down in that circus too?"

Chariot fell silent.

"...right," Croix said, wiping her brow. "Listen, that got a little too aggressive. I know... you worry about me, about the Shiny Rod. That's all history, too. You hear? The Rod and its business, that's all you, that's all Akko. I'm not gonna second-guess the people who saved my life half a dozen times that night. Whatever I had in mind, it's dead and buried. And just like all those bodies, we don't have to haunt anyone with any of it. Ever again."

Chariot glared at her.

"Well?"

"Are you going to interrupt me again?"

"Maybe, if you get the wrong idea."

"I won't stop trying to find out, Croix."

"Ahh, there's the Chariot I fit three fingers in. Keep trying. You have so very much more to lose than you could ever hope to gain. Next time you think about making the wrong decision, remember who 's half the reason you can still jill yourself off."

Chariot slinked away into the dark.

Croix slouched into the New Moon Tower.

A long time ago, they had fallen bitterly, brutally in love, and the fallout was the stuff of nuclear winter. Love had guttered ever-so-briefly in the wake of that night, but it was never to be again.

* * *

Croix regarded her latest findings.

The exotic emotional spectra were not unique to the Taken. With a few months' worth of insight and more active samples recovered and digested from the Cavendish estate-washed out to its own lake, alas, so much lost to never be found again-she had found that infraviolet-ultrared was readily accessible to the correct instruments.

Like any emotion, they could be tapped for juice. The output was staggering, intoxicating, arousing. Anger times fear plus anxiety to the power of hate with just a dash of sadness for flavor.

The Noir Fuel Spirit was inadequate for harnessing these energies. She needed something with a little more kick. Perhaps a little more physicality. There would need to be sacrifices in the design. It would need an anchor. Something to keep all that energy focused and directed. It would need to be manufactured, not conjured.

Ideas were flowing. It was all possible, immensely possible, practically at hand. All she had to do was immanentize it.

She tickled the chin of the abnormal dragon fetus. Plated in silver while still alive, the little bastard was practically spewing ultrared like foam from a dented beer can.

"You gave us a whole shitload of trouble," she said. "But remember this, worm. When we find your Hive buddies, everything I've learned from you is going to be turned on them. They're gonna die screaming and I will be laughing."

She leaned in and whispered.

"Of this you can be sure, O subject mine."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks for reading. This was a challenge to complete, but I feel good about completing it!

There is a sequel I have in mind, though it's probably not gonna be for a while. I'll sum it up thusly: if this was "The Darkness consumed you," the sequel is 'Your Light fades away."

Thankya. Hopefully the sappy shipping was worth the cannibalism and limb-severing, or vice-versa.

Last but not least, for the curious, a YouTube playlist of songs that inspired and kept my mood focused through the writing of this tale: playlist?list=PLtenSGtMrW90saCQfytE4I7BbGHBVPMUN


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